Nigeria aims to boost fight against maternal mortality

Stimulating demand for family planning services, and making them widely accessible and affordable, is being promoted by various actors, including the UN Population Fund, whose maternal health specialist Olubunmi Asa says that the country's contraception prevalence rate is just 10% compared with 22% in South Africa and 66% in Egypt. Health workers are disappointed by the dithering over passing a National Health Bill, which if approved would establish minimum guarantees of basic health-care services for groups such as children younger than 5 years and pregnant women, and help extend primary health care to 60% of Nigerians living in hard-to-reach rural communities.