Chioma Umeha
Coca-Cola Nigeria Ltd has emerged best company in
the ‘Good Health and Well-being category’ at the 12th SERAS Awards.
The company was recognised for its Safe Birth
Initiative (SBI) – a partnership with
the Federal Ministry of Health, the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to
the President on Sustainable Development Goals and an NGO, Medshare
International Inc., that aims to tackle the high rate of maternal and newborn
deaths in Nigeria.
SBI is focused on supporting doctors and nurses to
achieve successful birth outcomes by strengthening the capacity of target
public hospitals in three critical areas.
These include; procurement of vital maternal and
neonatal medical equipment and supplies to enable safe deliveries and
post-delivery emergency care.
Others are; training biomedical engineering
technicians to improve equipment maintenance and uptime; and reactivating a
large stock of abandoned medical equipment wasting away in public hospitals.
The first phase of the initiative is currently
under implementation and will provide 15 major public hospitals recommended by
the Federal Ministry of Health with hospital equipment, kits and supplies with
a total conservative value of about $10.8 million, that is over N3.8 billion.
The Safe Birth Initiative is expected to
ultimately improve the affordability and accessibility of maternity health care
services in the beneficiary hospitals.
On receiving the award, Nwamaka Onyemelukwe,
Public Affairs and Communications Manager, Coca-Cola Nigeria remarked, “Awards
like these encourage us to do more and strengthen our resolve to provide
solutions to the various challenges facing the communities in which we serve.
We thank our project partners and dedicate this award to the brave medical
professionals in hospitals across Nigeria who work tirelessly to ensure that
mothers and their babies go back home alive.”
Earlier in the year, SBI marked the graduation of
20 biomedical engineering technicians, from 10 leading medical institutions
across the country, who had undergone an intensive two-week capacity training
focused on improving equipment maintenance and uptime, as well as the delivery
and installation of a full consignment of four units of 40-foot shipping containers
of medical equipment at the National Hospital, Abuja.
Consignments for Federal Medical Centres in
Ebute-Metta have arrived in the country and are scheduled for installation in
the coming weeks, as needs assessments are conducted at other approved
hospitals.
