In a bid to reduce maternal and infant mortality in Ebonyi State, the wife of the state governor, Chief Mrs Mary-Maudaline Nwifuru, has enrolled 4,078 pregnant women and 600 infants aged 0–5 in the State Health Insurance Scheme through her foundation, Better Health for Rural Women and Internally Displaced Persons Foundation (BERWO).
According to the First Lady, no woman deserves to die while bringing forth another life. Mrs Nwifuru’s foundation, BERWO, team lead Prof. Nkechinyere Emma-Echiegu disclosed this while enumerating the achievements of the governor’s wife through the foundation.
Prof. Emma-Echiegu noted that the governor’s wife has also built houses for widows in the state and enrolled over 300 sickle cell champions into the State Health Insurance Scheme.
She added that the governor’s wife’s foundation has also treated over 300 male adults and children with scrotal hernia.
“In the last two years, I must tell you, we’ve been able to do quite a lot in as much as it’s not even everywhere in the news. Last year we were able to enroll 4,078 pregnant women into health insurance.
“We also enrolled 600 infants for the health instance, 0 to 5. Reason, we can be jubilating that we’ve enrolled pregnant women. Not now following up on what happens to these women after giving birth. Did the children survive? Did they die. It’s a major issue and that’s why we had to enroll these 600 children to assess free care.
“We also enrolled 300 sickle cell champions.
“We were able to perform some surgery for scrotal Hernia on over 300 male adults and children.”
Speaking on youth and women empowerment, the BERWO team lead said the foundation gave scholarships to seven Ebonyi children schooling in Abuja, while various skills were taught to others, who were also provided with start-up kits.
She then urged parents to be resilient, avoid spoon-feeding, and stop overprotecting their children. According to her, overprotection is the real cause of the problems facing the present generation.
“There is no short cut to greatness, you must work hard to survive. We spoon-feed and over protected our children too much and we spoilt them. We better change that attitude, we are responsible adults because we went through the right process and we are loosing the value. The children needs to learn from their mistakes but look in words and guide them and get help when needed.”
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She also urged couples to respect each other.
“But I must tell you, you see this generation, a lot of work needs to be done. We are just doing the best we can.”
She further noted that the state government, through the BERWO Foundation, has a target of distributing 17,000 postnatal care items to pregnant and nursing mothers in rural communities under the Baby Shower Initiative of Mrs Nwifuru.
Mrs Emma-Echiegu also noted that BERWO had empowered 60 youths in various skills.
“We were also able to empower children with functional skills. They learned skill on different traits we gave them. Is one thing to train children into skills is another thing to give them startup kits.
“We bought different kits. They needed to start up on their own. We did the skill training, then we did the computer training for 60 people and we gave them computers after the training because if you train and you don’t set up, it’s nothing. We gave them HP computers about 400,000 and above and they are using it,” she said.
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