…From Dele Ogunyemi, Ibadan…
A university don, Dr. Adetola Adeoti, has advocated improved education and creation of more employment opportunities for women to enhance their health status and those of the children.
Dr. Adeoti of the Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Ibadan, stated this in Ibadan on Tuesday in her presentation at the National Policy Seminar on Health, Economic Growth and Poverty reduction held at the conference hall of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), Ibadan.
The seminar was organized by the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) in conjunction with the NISER.
In her presentation entitled “Child Health and Maternal Health Status and Demand for Health Care Services in Nigeria,” Dr. Adeoti submitted that educated and employed mothers will not only be healthy but also have healthy children.
The university lecturer noted with concern that even though Nigeria has experienced significant increase in economic growth in the last decade, “yet the health indicators are very poor particularly in the rural sector where poverty incidence is highest.”
She therefore recommended that the immunization coverage area across the country be increased and healthy infrastructure improved, particularly in the rural areas.
While canvassing that the Federal and State Government should sensitize not only mothers but head of schools and religious leaders, the university don insisted that efforts should also be made to immunize children in schools and worship centres in addition to clinics and hospitals with the consent of their parents.
In another presentation entitled “An Empirical Analysis of the Growth-Health Relationship in Nigeria”, Dr Musibau Babatunde, of Department of Economics, University of Ibadan, maintained that policies promoting growth would have the desirable effect of reducing poverty.
To this end, he recommended that more doctors should be trained based on its importance on life expectancy while educational policies that can increase school enrolment should be instituted.
According to him, higher investment in health infrastructure and control of diseases that will reduce the death rate is needed to reduce the negative effect of the death rate on growth.
A representative of African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), Nairobi, Kenya, Dr Witness Simbanegavi, while addressing the forum explained that AERC in collaboration with NISER organized the seminar “to disseminate the two findings under its Research Programme on Health, Economic, Growth and Poverty Reduction.”
He remarked that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had sponsored both the Research and the dissemination workshop.
Speaking earlier, the Director General of NISER, Professor Olufemi Taiwo informed the gathering that the AERC was a cross country project including Nigeria adding that the studies are related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) programmes in Nigeria.
Professor Taiwo opined that the findings will assist the nation’s health sector.