A professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Ilorin, Kwara State Abiodun Aboyeji, has declared that, an average of 40,000 women die every year in Nigeria due to poor maternal health.

Aboyeji disclosed this recently in Ilorin while delivering the 150th inaugural lecture of the niversity titled "Pregnancy: The Burden of Womanhood." According to him, "the situation of maternal health in the country calls for declaration of state of emergency and urgent attention to address the issue".

He said that, "the most important thing needed is political prioritisation and commitment to safe motherhood issues". Aboyeji added that, "indeed, how else can we describe a condition that is responsible for the death of 3,333 women every month in Nigeria, 769 every week, 109 every day and five every hour, leaving between 800,000 to 1.2 million others with permanent disabilities? "Nigerian women are disadvantaged. They are unable to use modern contraception because of non-availability, inaccessibility and male-dominant society not approving of legal abortion services based on restrictive abortion law and sheer hypocrisy.

"If the pregnancy is intended and wanted, health facilities across the country are poorly equipped and manned to take care of them. Eventually in the process of delivery, thousands die which in itself is a tragedy as most of the deaths are avoidable". The professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology said political priority and commitment are needed to reduce burden of pregnancy on womanhood in such areas as education, health, policy formulation and infrastructure, adding that abortion law should be reviewed to make it less restrictive.

He called on government to invest 'massively' in education at all levels to develop educational institutions to acceptable standards, saying that government should formulate and implement policy that will make education free and compulsory to at least senior secondary school level so as to produce populace that will be literate, better informed and be able to use information appropriately. The university don also called for massive investment in health sector to upgrade health facilities, train and retrain health workers. "There is need to also provide additional incentives to rural health workers, make obstetrics emergency care available in rural areas, strengthen the district hospitals to provide comprehensive obstetrics care, and establish maternal waiting homes around teaching hospitals and federal medical centres to accommodate high risk of obstetric patients till they deliver", he said.