On Soludo’s free antenatal and delivery services

Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s free antenatal and delivery services in Anambra State not only has an enormous positive impact on low-income families, it also addresses the needs of women who desire to access the high-quality maternal care services in government hospitals in Anambra State.

In September 2023, Governor Soludo announced free antenatal and delivery services for pregnant women in Anambra State. He promised to sustain this programme as long as he is at the helm of affairs in Anambra State.
Governor Soludo’s free maternal service programme has put smiles on the faces of many families in Anambra. Last December, there was a story of a man who fled the state because he thought he could not pay for his wife’s medical bills after hearing that his wife was delivered of quadruplets through caesarian section in a government hospital. This proud but cash-strapped father only came back when he was told that government hospitals in Anambra do not collect a penny from nursing mothers.

The plight of an uneducated and poor pregnant woman in Nigeria is worrisome. In 2020, a report published on the Conversation International Journal stated that while nine out of 10 educated and economically stable women gave birth in health facilities, only two out of 10 women in poor households with no formal education gave birth in health facilities in Nigeria.

Imagine the plight of women who give birth outside health facilities in Nigeria. The high numbers of infant and maternal mortality rates in Nigeria present a picture of the plight of women from poor households.

In 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported the infant mortality rate of Lagos and Yobe to be 74.5 per 1000 births and 102.3 per 1000 births, respectively. These numbers are a far cry from the 3.7 deaths per 1,000 live births reported in the United Kingdom – a country where healthcare is easily accessible to the majority of the populace.

With the free maternal programme in Anambra, the quality of life of low-income pregnant women in the state is expected to improve significantly.

Governor Soludo’s free maternal services also address the need of women who are economically stable and who want to make sure they get high-quality healthcare services during pregnancy.

Anambra’s free maternal health services address some of the shortcomings of this kind of programme in other jurisdictions.
To be clear, Anambra is not the first state to have announced free maternal healthcare services.

But Anambra has built on the lessons learnt from other states and has made its free maternal healthcare services to be top-notch.

Issues related to long waiting periods during antenatal care, bad outcomes such as the death of infants and verbal abuse by health workers are not heard of in Anambra State. Reports show that the beneficiaries of Anambra’s free maternal services are extremely satisfied with the services they have received.

Records from the Anambra State’s Ministry of Health show that in August 2023 only 550 deliveries were registered in public hospitals in Anambra State. This number has grown consistently at an average monthly rate of 35%. Last December, the number of deliveries in public hospitals was 1656. Within this period no mortality was recorded.

Between August 2023 and December 2023, a total of 25,181 women were given free antenatal care in Anambra.

Available records also show that half of the women who received free maternal healthcare services within this period are not from Anambra but are resident in Anambra. This is the kind of society Governor Soludo believes in. People who pay their taxes and have been good citizens in any state in Nigeria should not be prevented from benefiting from any social programme in the state where they live.

Obviously, funding this programme requires a lot of planning and management. It requires the support of the state’s legislature.
Governor Soludo believes that a healthy population is a productive population. The governor believes that government is supposed to make life easier for the people!

Nwankwo is the special adviser on special projects to Governor Soludo