PROLIFERATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION OF BIRTH DELIVERY AS CATALYST TO HIDDEN MATERNAL MORTALITY IN ILORIN EMIRATE, NIGERIA, 1999 TO 2020

Abstract

Since the 1960s, the burden recorded from the persisting cases of maternal and neonatal health problems in Ilorin Emirate, Nigeria, cannot be overemphasized. These problems were borne out of the disparity in access to standard orthodox healthcare, most especially at the grass root level. The military regimes responded by launching and intensifying efforts and strategies towards combating the scourge and safeguarding the good health of all. In 1986, they ensured the execution of the 1978 Alma Ata declaration by establishing and funding Basic Health Centres in all political wards of Nigeria. As of the year 2000, however, the subsequent democratically elected governments castrated and frustrated the effective implementation of the “health for all”, thereby triggering the proliferation and commercialization of maternal health care in the Ilorin Emirate. The study adopts historical method of data analysis using primary and secondary sources to juxtapose the intensifying magnitude of hidden maternal mortality as the repercussion of excessive proliferation and commercialization of maternal health care in the Ilorin Emirate. Using purposive sampling, oral interviews were conducted with traditional birth attendants, Community Health Extension Workers (CHEW), church birth attendants, medicine store birth attendants, retired nurses, medical doctors, pregnant mothers, and other hospital supporting staff. Information sourced proclaimed the extent through which excessive commercialization of birth delivery, accompanied by other vices such as the quest for an alternative means of livelihood, religious fanaticism, impunity and misplacement of priorities, have compounded the already worsened unreported and hidden maternal and infant mortality context in twenty-first century Ilorin health history.