How Effective is the 2012 Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Week (MNCHW) in River State?

Background: Nigeria is one of the countries noted to have made insufficient progress towards the attainment of the health-related MDGs. Experience has however shown that a few cost-effective interventions that can be delivered in resource poor settings, through family/community-level action and schedulable population-oriented services, are able to rapidly attain these goals. This was the basis of the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Week (MNCHW) in Nigeria, designed to achieve rapid population coverage of chosen interventions, within the one week period of the programme. This study assessed the effectiveness of the week held in Rivers State, in June 2012. Materials and Methods: The data for the assessment was collected through on-the- spot observations, three semi-structured questionnaires, and the final summaries of the week, provided by the State Ministry of Health. The questionnaires were administered in nine health centers, in three randomly selected LGAs. The first questionnaire was used to assess the extent of the social mobilization carried out for the week; the second was an exit interview of clients of the health facilities, and used to assess the success of the social mobilization campaign; while the third questionnaire was used to assess the availability of the intervention commodities, and the quality of care given to the clients. Results: The social mobilization campaign for the week was poorly funded and did not have much effect, as only 28.57% of the clients of the health facilities were aware of the week. Most of the commodities for the week, except the NPI vaccines and vitamin A, were not available in the required quantities. Long Lasting Insecticide-treated Nets (LLINs) and Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine (SP) were not available in 65.22% of the LGAs, family planning commodities were not available in 30.43% of the LGAs, while iron and folate tablets were given to just 2.86% of the targeted total. The coverage rate of the vaccines ranged from 1.29% recorded with the measles vaccine, to the 14.85%, for the DPT vaccine. The coverage with vitamin A of 43.41% was the highest of all the interventions, while the 0.36% coverage for family planning commodities was the least. Conclusions: The MNCHW in Rivers State did not meet the stated objectives. Efforts should be made to leverage on the political will of the current government of the State for health programmes. Keywords: Cost-effective interventions; Rapid population coverage; MNCHW; MDGs; Nigeri