Akeredolu offers free medical healthcare to pregnant women, children under five

Gov. Mr Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo has offered free and quality medical healthcare to pregnant women and children under five years old for effective healthcare delivery.

Akeredolu made this known on Wednesday at the 2nd Forum of Wives of State Officials and Female Appointees (FOWOSO) Summit 2019 in Akure tagged “Prioritising Women’s Health and Well Being in Nigeria”.

The governor said free health care would be given to every pregnant woman and children under five with the genuine card “Igbeayo” that was earlier issued by the state for proper identification of the citizens.

He promised that his administration would continue to intensify efforts at improving the lives of women by empowering them through FOWOSO programmes across the 18 LGs of the state.

Earlier, the Governor’s wife, Mrs Betty Akeredolu, said FOWOSO had trained over 1800 women (an average of 100 women per LGA) on ready-to-use skills with high economic value, such as shoe-making, fashion design, make-up, soap making, bags and bead making, catering and confectioneries.

She said that graduates from FOWOSO skills acquisition class received start-up kits, which enabled them to immediately start earning money from their newly acquired skills.

According to her, we will not faint until we see women everywhere being treated with as much respect as their male counterparts.

“Our motivation is not because we are women but because we seek a society where continuous development is achieved and sustained.

“We must come to the understanding that everyone, regardless of gender, is needed for sustainable development.

“Let me make it emphatically clear that it is no one’s benefit to suppress the abilities of women by denying them quality education, marrying them off against their will and silencing them when they want to speak.

“FOWOSO has the ideology that everyone must be allowed to express themselves without preference to any particular gender.

We should not expect any form of development if women, who make up more than half of the entire population are restricted to kitchen duties and child-rearing only and are then expected to like serfs, totally depend on their husbands for every need,” she said.

Mrs Akeredolu said that FOWOSO had impacted positively the lives of a significant number of women especially at the grassroots level that strives for gender equality in every aspect of the socioeconomic spectrum.

She regretted that over 102 women died as a result of childbirth every day, while 2,123 children’s dream to celebrate their fifth birthday was crushed by death.

“Countless women have lost their lives to various diseases, breast cancer inclusive because they can’t seek health care if their husbands do not give them a go-ahead, this is totally unacceptable and has to change,” she said.

The governor’s wife urged the men to respect and love their wives and children, adding that everyone has a role to play in the development of the home and the society.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that FOWOSO was launched on Nov. 27, 2018, and while the summit was its second edition.

NAN also reports that FOWOSO outreach template also included a medical intervention that catered for the health needs of women and children in some areas of the state with the women trained on how to conduct breast self-examination, to reduce maternal mortality linked to breast cancer.