The Alliance is contributing to strengthening the nation’s health care system by improving demand creation (promotion, delivery and utilization of health and nutrition services by women and children, increasing coverage of MNCH Week interventions and improving human resource for health capacity of health workers to deliver quality health care services).

The demand for critical maternal newborn & child health services has remained low for vulnerable pools during Maternal Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Weeks campaign, a biannual national mass campaign.
The need to urgently interrupt and reverse the trend necessitated the Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria to deliver a package of high-impact maternal, newborn and child health interventions in several states of the Federation, proven to be effective in both reducing mortality rates and improving mother and child health during the bi-annual MNCH weeks. The bi-annual event impacted millions of lives and aligns with the Alliance’s goal of improving health outcomes through innovation, strategic partnerships, impact investment and advocacy. The benefiting states were selected following needs-assessment analysis against the backdrop of poor maternal and under-5 health indices as well as their MNCH week needs.
In 2015, PHN provided a platform for financial institutions and telecoms partners to leverage their mobile health infrastructure to generate demand in high-risk jurisdictions, targeting 12 million vulnerable women using geo-location based mobile text messages and Interactive Voice Messages (IVR) in local languages to raise awareness of the MNCH services to help change health care-seeking behavior.

Working in partnership with United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), Etisalat, PZ Cussons Nigeria, GSMA, Vas2Nets and the Subsidy Re—investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) Maternal and Child Health Programme, the Alliance led a joint private and public sector, innovative high impact initiative towards ensuring greater success of the national Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health (MNCH) Weeks. The Private Sector Health Alliance ensured a commensurate increase on the supply side by providing nutrition and life saving commodities to treat 400,000 children in several states. Intermediary results reveal that 14 States of the Federation were covered and 15 private sector members were leveraged.

 

MNCH Weeks Progress Report