The Rotary Action Group for Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health (RMCH RAG) has been working to address maternal and child health issues in Nigeria for over 25 years. However, limited solutions in localized settings were not enough to address the 67,000 maternal deaths that occur annually in Nigeria. To tackle this issue, the RMCH RAG members in Nigeria and globally joined forces to launch the Program of Scale. The program’s goal is to improve the awareness of and access to quality reproductive, maternal, and child health services in health facilities and the community while also improving voluntary access to modern contraceptives for women and their partners. The program also aims to strengthen the national health system sustainably, engage all relevant stakeholders and partners in improving care in the public and private sector, and document the impact of program scaling and replication using data from the national information platform on Maternal, Perinatal, and Child Death Surveillance and Response (MPCDSR).
The RMCH RAG brought together global and national partnerships with policymakers, community leaders, health providers, and professional organizations to produce impacts at scale and sustain these efforts. The group is committed to learning and adjusting program plans based on experiences with care at the facility and community levels, using data coming from cases of mothers’ and infants’ deaths through the MPCDSR. The RMCH RAG offers familiarity with large national programs in a range of country health systems, as well as literature on best practices and approaches for achieving scale and sustainability.
To achieve healthy families and communities globally, the Rotary Action Group and districts are committed to making Programs of Scale a central strategy. The group encourages people to engage with them to produce more significant impacts, quicker, and on a larger scale throughout Nigeria and Africa. The RMCH RAG offers the Together for Healthy Families in Nigeria program as a model to show that women’s lives and those of their infants are worth saving. The program aims to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality in Nigeria by 25%, reaching 2.3 million people, and is the recipient of the 2021-22 Rotary Foundation Programs of Scale grant. Interested individuals and organizations can contact the RMCH RAG for more information or review their progress on the RMCH RAG website.
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