Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State

Kogi State Government says it will commence a week-long free primary health care services for pregnant women and children who are between 6 and 59 months in the state.

Mr Bolarinwa Ogundusi, the Kogi State Nutrition Officer, disclosed this in Lokoja on Thursday at a two-day training programme for health workers from the 21 local government areas of the State.

Ogundusi said that the training programme was for the training of the trainers, who would in turn were expected go to their various local governments to train other health workers.

According to him, it is also meant for the implementation of the planned Maternal and Neonatal Child Health (MNCHW) week at the community level in the state.

“The Maternal and Newborn Child Health Week (MNCHW) is a week-long programme scheduled to hold from Jan. 16 to Jan.20 in all the 717 designated facilities across the 21 local government areas in the state.

“It is an intervention package meant for pregnant women and children who are between 6 and 59 months old in the state to reduce infant and maternal mortality rate.

“It has a lot of thematic areas such as Vitamin A supplementation, mental valine vaccine, immunisation, family planning, deworming and MUAC screening.

Experts describe valine as a crystalline essential amino acid and one of the building blocks of plants and animal proteins.

‘’Others are malaria and net distribution, focus antenatal care, (HIV/AIDS) testing and counselling among others.

“In addition, the week-long programme will help us to know if children are being adequately screened for nutritional screening and to also get the percentage of children that are malnourished or not.

“This will enable us to treat the malnourished children, to make sure that every child in the state is well taken care of nutritionally and otherwise,” Ogundusi said.

Mr Austin Ojotule, the Acting Director, Kogi State Primary Health Care Development Agency (PHCDA), told NAN that at the end of the training, participants would have been well equipped with what they are supposed to do.

They are expected to go down to local government areas to train other health workers,” Ojotule said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that all the local government immunisation officers, nutrition officers, maternal child and health coordinators, malaria elimination officers and stakeholders’ in the sector health attended the occasion. (NAN)