As part of efforts to reduce maternal mortality in Sokoto State, the state government and UNFPA recently launched the Community Midwifery and Bonding Scheme Project. The unveiling of this EU-Funded initiative on May 28 by the Sokoto State governor, Dr. Ahmad Aliyu Sokoto, was among the highlights of the 8th Sokoto Council on Health meeting held in the Sokoto State capital.
The training programme will provide full scholarships to 500 young women from rural communities to study midwifery — 250 in 2026 and another 250 in 2027- an intervention that is aimed at improving the pool of skilled birth attendants and reducing maternal and neonatal mortality through the deployment of beneficiaries to primary healthcare centres in hard-to-reach areas upon their graduation.
Speaking during the launch, the Sokoto State Governor, Aliyu Sokoto, also listed several incentives for healthcare workers and the investments his administration had committed to for improving the state's health indices. He also commended UNFPA and partners for interventions that were giving attention to underserved communities and integrated with the state’s 9-SMART Innovative Agenda, a strategic framework for accelerating universal health coverage.
During his opening remarks, UNFPA Kaduna Head of Office Dr. Audu Alayande, who represented the UNFPA Nigeria Resident Representative Ms Muriel Mafico, said Sokoto was of paramount importance to UNFPA’s programming in Nigeria, given its level of earmarked funding for the operational year. He said the administration’s transformative health reforms that focused on training healthcare workers, retaining expertise, and procuring child-spacing commodities were also commendable.
In a presentation titled the Training and Recruitment of More Midwives as a Strategy to reducing Maternal and Infant Mortality in Sokoto State, the UNFPA State focal person for the EU-SARAH project in the state Dr Rabiatu Sageer, emphasized that the sourcing of skilled birth attendants from within communities was an urgent and global Action that would grow and support the midwifery workforce. She added that it was a sustainable solution to mitigating the worker shortage, since their deployment from other areas often disrupted service delivery.
The midwifery scheme is also scheduled to take off in Adamawa and Kwara, with 500 beneficiaries earmarked per state. Upon graduation, this will bring the total of trained midwives to 1500 across the three target states, supporting the advancement of safer births through improved services within communities.
