A Professor of Public Health at Emmanuel University, Raleigh, North Carolina, Anastasia Oniah-Ashi, has urged the Nigerian government to strengthen national security as part of efforts to address the country’s maternal health challenges.

The US-based Professor made the call during her inaugural lecture and professorial tenuring in Abuja, which was also streamed via Zoom on Saturday.

She expressed concern over the rising cases of child and maternal mortality, noting that insecurity remains a major barrier preventing women, especially in rural areas, from accessing timely medical care.

“We are looking at the social determinants of health. Most of the time, people treat diseases but the most important thing like I said in my lecture is prevention and this insecurity is one of the social determinants.

“If there’s no security, maternal health is really a problem because those women in the rural area sometimes want to deliver, they cannot access health facilities and that leads to maternal mortality. So those are some of the things we’re trying to address. That is why we’re looking at systems and policies and will power,” she said.

She advocated the provision of basic social amenities and urged leaders to find lasting solutions to insecurity.

“Advocate for the provision of social amenities for the provision of security for the people by the leaders. That is why we’re talking of strengthening the system because if the system is poor that is there’s insecurity. It affects health generally. So, these are some of the things we hope that the leaders will be able address and we’re hard to create awareness to let people know that what causes diseases is not just biological, like I said, it’s structural, it’s policy. If we have leaders that can address the determinants, we’ll go a long way to address health issues.

Professor Oniah-Ashi noted that similar challenges persist across Sub-Saharan Africa, leading many citizens to seek medical care abroad despite the availability of facilities at home.

“What’s happening in Nigeria is also happening in other parts of sub-Saharan Africans. That is why our system is poor. You’ll see people travelling to abroad to access health treatment, it’s not that we don’t have it here, we have these facilities, we can do well with these facilities but the system is poor but if we can get our address, this will work fine.” (Nigerian Tribune)