The National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, has been urged to deploy constitutional and legal means to ensure that breaches arising from maternal mortality are compensated for so as to stem the high rate of the scourge in Nigeria, which currently has the highest number of cases in Africa.
This was highlighted by Professor Uchenna Emelonye, who was a guest speaker at the monthly webinar hosted by the Human Rights Institute of the National Human Rights Commission with participants drawn globally from the academia, civil society groups, human rights bodies and the media.
In a presentation titled: ‘Maternal Mortality: Imperatives for National Human Rights Commission’, Emelonye, a Visiting Professor of Law at Bournemouth University UK and Professional Researcher at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, highlighting statistics which showed Nigeria’s abysmally poor performance on maternal health charts in Africa and the world, explained that approximately 250 women die from maternal health issues in Nigeria on daily basis.
According to him, “While the intention of this webinar is not to antagonise the government or its agencies over the high rate of maternal mortality cases in Nigeria, he maintained that the presentation is meant to stimulate a discourse on the subject and procure the necessary attention that the topic rightly deserves as a human rights issue. He further maintained that there is great need for a paradigm shift in order reduce maternal mortality which is man-made.
Maternal mortality, defined by the World Health Organization as the death of a woman during pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, remains a grave global health challenge, particularly in developing nations. Aside being a public health crisis, Prof Emelonye maintained that it is fundamentally a profound human rights issue. According to him, each maternal death represents a tragic failure to uphold a woman’s most basic rights: the right to life and the right to non-discrimination.
“Treating it as human rights breach will ensure that people and institutions are held accountable and remedies are provided to victims whenever such violations occurs in the country, because each time a woman dies from child birth, Section 33(1) of the Constitution is ostensibly violated and that is why the National Human Rights Commission should take up litigation of such breaches on behalf of victims and their next of kins.
Professor Emelonye equally called for some drastic reforms in woman health delivery system in Nigeria, urging that the Ministry of Women’s Affairs should closely oversight the Ministry of Health in the provision of maternal health services.
Other demands made by the human rights expert during the lecture are: Rebranding of maternal health services to maternal health rights; improvement of advocacy on women affirmative action, and women empowerment; ensuring the conduct of national maternal health audit as well as regular audits; issue of national and state public reports on maternal mortality; naming and shaming of defaulting states and institutions as well as the introduction of Human Rights 101 course into medical/nursing educational curriculum in the country.
The session was moderated by Nsongurua Udombana, a Professor of International Law and Head of the Human Rights Institute.