Cross River Health Commissioner, Inyang Asibong, has said that the
increasing mortality rate of pregnant women was due to the encouragement
from Pastors who persuade them to patronize of Faith Based
Organizations (FBOs).
Asibong stated this while delivering a keynote lecture at the 2017
Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the Cross River
State chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association where she said that
the state is putting measures in place to return residents to medical
facilities.
She said: “We have religious leaders telling these people what and
what not to do, and they prefer listening to them than their parents or
health workers.
“Most times they prefer to labor for long and are taken to the
hospital when they are on their last breath. Eventually when they die in
the hospital, we are not allowed to prosecute because the leaders in
question are pastors and they get away with it.”
She said the aberration will be tackled through the building of
advocacy centers, which will be used for purposes of intervention to
prevent such incidents from occurring again.
“We are trying to break that culture by employing health advocacy
centers and are also talking to the pastors who are ignorant, to let
their patients be in the hospitals where they can always come and pray
for them,” said Dr. Asibong.
She listed some cases she had been involved in and pointed out that
the challenge of FBOs was common in Sub-Saharan Africa especially those
fanatical about religion.
Also, she pointed out that early detection of diseases and intervention was key to excellent clinical performance.
She said that: “Early intervention and prevention is better than cure
as we live in a resource constrained setting. If we wait till the
disease has progressed, we would have a problem treating that person.
“Take for instance cancer, we don’t have enough equipments in
treating it but if cervical cancer is dictated early, it can be
completely cured.