Women to get paid for attending antenatal clinics

As part of efforts to battle the menace of high maternal mortality rates, the federal government has concluded plans to pay women who attend antenatal clinics.
The plan would be executed as part of the Midwifery Service Scheme (MSS) introduced in 2010; and it is hoped that it would also impact positively on child health.
More than 4,000 midwives have been deployed to 1,000 health facilities nationwide under the MSS.
Abdullahi Mohammed, the Director, Primary Health Care System Development in the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said the government budgeted N15 billion for Maternal and Child Health Care from the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P).
He added that part of the money would also be used to employ additional 2,000 midwives for the MSS.
“Key elements involved is not just on the midwives bringing them (pregnant women) alone, the other component of it is what we call the conditional cash transfer; it’s also part of the demand side intervention,” he said. “You know in the health care delivery system, we have the supply side intervention and we have the demand side intervention. For the supply side intervention includes all what we do; the input that we need to put in to provide the services. But the demand side intervention, what do you need to do for the client to be able to come to access your services? You must remove the financial barrier.”
Mohammed said the payment plan was designed to assist women to address the demand side constraints of maternal health; adding that the total package of the financial incentives for each woman was five thousand naira.
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