It is widely known in Nigeria that after every delivery a woman is expected to go on 3 months maternity leave. This leave was later pegged into 4 months. The reason is to help mothers give adequate care to infants, by feeding them with exclusive breastfeeding.

The Minister of health, Isaac Adewole, has assured Nigerians that his ministry will collaborate with the ministry of labour and productivity to increase maternity leave from 4 months to 6 months.

The minister of health made this statement at the ongoing World Breastfeeding Week in Abuja, his reason is to allow mothers practice exclusive breastfeeding.

"The duration of maternity leave is too short, an urgent step must be taken to encourage lactating mothers" he said

He admonished married men, to allow their wives breastfeed their babies without seeing their babies as competitors.

According to World Health Organization, infants should be exclusively breastfeed for the first six months. The exclusive breastfeeding is most times not continued after the 3  months maternity leave is over.

Since mothers will have to subject their babies to the creche or day care, feed them with baby food, thereby increasing the chance of infants to develop some diseases.

The benefit of exclusive breastfeeding lowers the risk of gastrointestinal infection, it reduces infant mortality due to common childhood illnesses. 

To signify that the collaboration with the ministry of labour and productivity, which the minister of health mentioned is becoming 'better than good', to minister of labour said in one of her speech.
The need for lactating rooms for breastfeeding mothers should be in every institution.

To achieve this goal, I strongly believe everyone must be involved. Authorities at various works, men and women as a whole.

Do you think this can be achieved in Nigeria?
What other ways can government employ to make mothers practice exclusive breastfeeding?

WHO shared their database on immunization, vaccines. They shared the global immunization coverage levels on their twitter handle.

Photo credit: WHO twitter handle

Globally, 85% of children have been vaccinated with the first dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services and 67% with a second dose. 167 countries have included a second dose of measles vaccine as part of their routine vaccination schedule.

Nevertheless, coverage levels remain well short of the WHO recommended measles immunization coverage of at least 95% to prevent outbreaks, avert preventable deaths and achieve regional elimination goals. 

162 countries now use rubella vaccines and global coverage increased from 35% in 2010 to 52% in 2017, which represents an additional 25 million children vaccinated in 2017 compared to 2010. This is a major step towards reducing the occurrence of congenital rubella syndrome, a devastating condition that results in miscarriages, hearing impairment, congenital heart defects and blindness, among other life-long disabilities.

Newly available vaccines are being added as part of the life-saving vaccination package – such as those to protect against meningitis, malaria and even Ebola. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract, and can cause cervical cancer, other types of cancer, and genital warts in both men and women. In 2017, the HPV vaccine was introduced in 80 countries. 

On the other hand, vaccines to prevent against major killers of children such as rotavirus, a disease that causes severe childhood diarrhoea, and pneumonia have been around for over a decade. But the use of rotavirus and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV) is lagging behind. In 2017, global coverage was only 28% for rotavirus and 44% for PCV. Vaccination against both these diseases has the potential to substantially reduce deaths of children under 5 years of age, a target of the Sustainable Development Goals.

17 countries had transitioned out from Gavi financial support by the end of 2017. Out of these, 7 countries have achieved at least 90% coverage by for DTP3 at the national level.

With the above immunization coverage, can we boldly say that the world is becoming a better place for health care services?