Nigeria’s child-survival situation attracted renewed attention this week following the release of new statistics. Muhammad Pate, the coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, revealed that 280,000 infants perish in the first 28 days of life, mostly due to premature birth.
Even worse, an estimated 162,000 children die each year from pneumonia, a top killer of children worldwide.
While mortality rates for children below age five have reduced from 201 deaths per 1,000 in 2000 to 110 in 2023, Pate indicated that Nigeria is estimated to lose a total of 850,000 children annually via preventable child deaths.
Pate’s revelation shows that Nigeria has a mountain to climb if it has to reach the 2030 target of the Sustainable Development Goal.
Pneumonia: The forgotten killer
Pneumonia remains a major, often overlooked driver of child deaths in Nigeria. Its burden underscores the need for multisectoral intervention to protect children under five.
Apart from raising an alarm, the government, together with other stakeholders, has already rolled out measures to reverse this dire data.
A major breakthrough is an alliance between the Ministry of Health, Every Breath Counts Coalition and Paediatric Association of Nigeria, which, over the past five years, has produced an In-Patient Pneumonia Treatment Algorithm.
This initiative has greatly enhanced the capacity of healthcare personnel in secondary and tertiary facilities, resulting in better diagnosis and subsequent treatment of children suffering from severe pneumonia in those facilities.
According to the NDHS, this initiative helped reduce under-five mortality to 110 in 2024, from 132 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018. This success in child mortality rates is commendable.
The government is also pushing solutions targeted at newborn survival, where progress has been the slowest. Through strengthened primary healthcare systems, states across the country are adopting interventions such as Kangaroo Mother Care for premature and low-birthweight infants, oxygen therapy for respiratory distress and early initiation of breastfeeding.
The Ministry’s New Birth Defect Surveillance Guideline, developed in response to increasing congenital abnormalities, seeks to improve early detection and management while generating reliable data for prevention. This marks the first attempt at establishing a national, hospital-based surveillance system for birth defects.
Nigeria’s Child Survival Action Plan
On the policy front, Nigeria’s Child Survival Action Plan aims to cut down child mortality under age five to below 25 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030. Government officials have expressed scaling up lifesaving care at a community level, particularly for mothers and newborns in underserved areas.
The international community is also taking action. UNICEF Nigeria has reiterated its commitment to scale up efforts to prevent and treat pneumonia in premature babies, along with sustaining efforts to support supply chain development for critical commodities like amoxicillin dispersible tablets, oxygen concentrators, and neonatal care devices to ensure no Nigerian child suffers from preventable deaths.
Summary not available at this time.
