Nigeria remains one of the countries of the world that still records high maternal and child mortality with about 150 deaths among women of reproductive age due to pregnancy complications.
Over two thousand children under five years of age die daily from preventable causes. "These deaths are as a result of declining quality of healthcare services rendered to communities - especially hard-to-reach communities where they are already disadvantaged with respect to lack of public services," Development Communications Network stated.
The National Demographic and Health Survey of 2013 revealed that coverage and quality of healthcare services in Nigeria is poor. Less than 20 per cent of health facilities offer emergency obstetric care and only 35 per cent of deliveries are attended by skilled attendant.
Though many of these deaths are preventable, the quality of healthcare services continues to fall short of standard. Nigeria's government has made political commitments and pronouncements towards achievement of universal health coverage and access to reproductive healthcare.
The Abuja declaration of 2001 of allocating at least 15 per cent of national budget to health, Maputo Plan of Action (2006) to promote reproductive health services including Family Planning, Every Woman Every Child (EWEC) promise of 2010 to strengthen the health system, and the July 2012 commitment of US$45.4 million to provide reproductive health commodities are a few of such pronouncements.
Although the government began initiatives targeted at women and children (e.g. Saving One Million Lives, Midwives Service Scheme) the pace of decline in maternal mortality is slow, coupled with declining state of our healthcare system.
These problems continue to linger as a result of lack of political will, poor government prioritisation of health (as observed in declining allocation of budget for health), poor planning, coordination, and implementation of projects, lack of or insufficient data, non-effective use of data for planning preventing maternal death and illness is an issue of women's human rights.