Reproductive Health and MDGs 4 & 5 Forum (RH-MDGs FORUM)

There is a grim statistic affirming that women still die needless deaths mainly from complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Newborns and young children are not spared by unnecessary deaths. This informed the Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) and recently the Integrated Maternal, Newborn and Child health addressed under MDGs 4 and 5.

There are obvious challenges to Nigeria and other developing countries in achieving the objectives of the MDGs, especially the call for a 75% reduction of maternal mortality and 2/3 reduction of child mortality rate by 2015. This is due to factors such as poverty, lack of skilled health personnel and other infrastructures particularly in the rural and hard to reach communities.

This forum continues to broaden the discourse to include local voices hardly reported in any medium and provides an integrated approach to the dialogue on MDGs and other related development issues like the Integrated Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (IMNCH)Strategy.

Issues for discussion would include, but not limited to Couple relationships, Unwanted pregnancy, Maternal mortality and morbidity, Sexually transmitted diseases (STD), Unsafe Abortion, Infertility, Violence against women, harmful traditional practices and female genital mutilation, Special population groups (adolescents), Safe motherhood, Family planning, and Population and development.

Through weekly discourse new ideas would be transformed to influence program design, implementation and public opinion in clearly observable ways.

The forum is a project of Development Communications Network, a media-development NGO focusing on science communication and public health promotion.

Welcome.

Akin Jimoh, M.Sc.; MPH
Program Director
Development Communications Network,
Media Resource and Advocacy Center,
Lagos Nigeria.
ajimoh@devcomsnetwork.org
www.devcomsnetwork.org
www.devcomsmediadelivernow.blogspot.com