A former vice-chancellor of the Ondo State University of Medical Sciences (UNIMED), Ondo, Prof. Friday Okonofua has lamented the high cases of abortion in the country among Nigerian women.
Okonofua, the Leader of Centre of Reproductive Health Innovation (CERHI) at the University of Benin (UNIBEN) said that at 45 per 1,000 Nigerian women, the rate of illegal abortion in the country was very alarming when compared to the rate in some European countries which stands at four out of 1,000 women.
The eminent gynaecologist who spoke in Benin yesterday declared: “At 45 per 1,000, the figure for illegal abortion among Nigerian women is very high and alarming when compared to that of a country like Netherlands which stands at 4 per 1,000 even though it is legal over there and illegal in Nigeria.”
He said that the closure of UNIBEN due to the pandemic, and the economic lockdown greatly affected the centre areas of operation.
CERHI is a World Bank-supported project at UNIBEN whose mission is to implement high quality training and applied research for professionals needed to build a new cohort of human resource to tackle the population and reproductive health challengees in the African region.
Sounding optimistic, he however remarked that the centre was able to identify new ways and new directions to circumvent the difficulties and implement new projects.
He disclosed that as soon as the pandemic became evident, the centre quickly established collaboration with the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) to constitute a COVID-19 research and service delivery team.
Okonofua added: “We lent the real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) machine of the centre for use by the UBTH team for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in Edo State. The testing mechanism we put in place was later validated by the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and is currently one of only two laboratories in Edo State being approved for the diagnosis of COVID-19.”
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