Engineer Yori Afolabi.

Richard Elesho

The Kogi State office of the National Population Commission, NPC, says it is set to implement the 2024 Nigeria Verbal and Social Autopsy, VASA survey designed to provide insights into the causes of deaths of children under the age of five and women of reproductive age in sixty-seven communities across the state.

The VASA, survey which is a follow-up to the 2023 to 2024 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, NDHS, carried out in the state is to help government understand and plan to address the biomedical and social mortality of mothers and children.

Addressing a press conference in Lokoja, the NPC Federal Commissioner in charge of the state, Engineer Yori Afolabi said the survey which would begin later this month was geared towards collecting essential data on both mother and child mortality, focusing on social and health-related factors that contribute to the deaths.

He explained that the data that would be collected would empower decision-makers to address the underlying issues behind the deaths.

Afolabi appealed to community leaders and residents of the selected communities for the survey to give maximum assistance to the NPC data collectors that would be deployed for the assignment.

The State Director of NPC, Mr Ojo Abiodun said the NDHS survey which is done every five years in Nigeria was a global health survey that covered nutrition, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, tobacco consumption, maternal and child mortality among other health and social issues.

In a remark, the state commissioner for Health, Doctor Abdullazeez Adams represented by the Public Relations Officer in the ministry, Dora Onoja promised to partner with the commission to ensure the success of the survey to reduce the mother and child mortality rate.