Good afternoon, I am delighted to join you here today. I have been asked to convey the apologies of Mrs Toyin Ojora Saraki, the Founder-President of the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, who is unfortunately unable to be with us. It is my privilege to represent Mrs Saraki here today: my name is Jack Tunmore and I lead Global Communications and Policy for the Wellbeing Foundation, also known as the WBFA. 

I will give a very brief overview of the work of the WBFA and then offer more insight into the two of our programmes which I think are the most relevant for our discussion here today. This session focuses on building partnerships with NGOs, communities, and academia. We bring the perspective of an NGO which works with global partners, academic institutions and Governments, both local and national. 

The Wellbeing Foundation Africa was founded in 2004 by Her Excellency Mrs Toyin Ojora Saraki, with the primary aim of improving health outcomes for women, infants and children. We combine our programmes with advocacy work in Nigeria and around the world: in fact our frontline health programmes inform that global advocacy. 

We have offices in Lagos, Abuja and Ilorin – and a global office in London, which is where I am based. I am fortunate to regularly spend time with our teams in Nigeria, including taking global partners on assessment visits, and when in London I am equally fortunate to be kept closely, and frankly, informed of frontline activities by the WBFA midwives, known as MamaCare midwives, via WhatsApp and Skype. 

Over 200,000 women have taken part in our flagship ‘MamaCare’ classes in Nigeria; antenatal and postnatal classes delivered by our qualified midwives. Despite dire national maternal mortality rates, we have not yet lost a single MamaCare mother. Our WBFA midwives transform the lives of mothers, their children and communities. No topic is off-limits in their classes – trust me, I know – and their results speak for themselves. Our online #MaternalMonday campaign was conceived as a platform for mothers and our WBFA midwives to share their knowledge, experiences & best practice. The aim of that sharing exercise is to raise awareness for the improvement of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child & adolescent health.  We harness the power of story-telling on social media each Monday to share accurate information on maternal health 

Now I will turn to the two programmes which I think are most relevant to our discussion here today. 

The first is the Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) programme which  is run in partnership with the Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health (CMNH) at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the oldest and most established school of tropical medicine in the world, and Johnson & Johnson, one of the largest global health companies. The model therefore brings together an esteemed higher-education institution, the private sector and a civil society organisation – which is of course us. 

Our EmONC training takes place in-house and equips doctors, nurses and midwives, as a collective team, with the skills needed to overcome obstetric emergencies.

Funding from the Johnson & Johnson Corporate Citizenship Trust allows for a three-pronged model from LSTM and the WBFA: (a) direct, skills-and-drills based method of teaching Emergency Obstetrics and Newborn Care, including newborn resuscitation; (b) Data Management training; and (c) Quality Improvement (QI) training. WBFA’s model is based on community mobilisation, advocacy, and strategic policy advisory. 

The partnership began in February 2015, with the two first phases being active in 7 of the 16 Local Government areas in Kwara State. In February I joined representatives from Johnson & Johnson and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to carry out a ground assessment of the training. The demonstrations witnessed by the team in Kwara were wide-ranging and innovative – we were particularly impressed with the simple inexpensive use of a condom catheter balloon filled with saline to control postpartum haemorrhage, the excessive bleeding after birth which is the leading cause of maternal mortality. As we know, 80% of all maternal deaths result from five complications which can be readily treated by qualified and trained health professionals: haemorrhage, sepsis, eclampsia, complications of abortion and obstructed labour. 

So far, the EmONC training programme has resulted in a 15% reduction in maternal case fatality rate and a 38% reduction in the still birth rate in health care facilities where the project is implemented. 

Since that visit, we can as partners proudly report that we have moved to the next stage of the programme, as from August 2018 to August 2020 our EmONC training is set to expand across the whole of Kwara State. 

Between 2018-2020, EmONC training will be delivered to an additional 27 healthcare facilities in the remaining 9 LGAs. Over 600 healthcare providers will be directly trained and over the 30-month project, an estimated 62,900 women and their newborns will benefit from the interventions implemented.

We have taken a quite different approach to our partnerships which seek to improve water, sanitation and hygiene – or ‘WASH’ conditions in healthcare facilities, schools, and communities in Nigeria. 

Poor WASH facilities in schools lowers attendance and educational achievement, with a particular effect on girls. According to UNESCO, one in ten girls in Sub-Saharan Africa do not attend school during their menstrual cycle, and can miss as much as twenty percent of a given school year. Meanwhile, poor WASH conditions in healthcare facilities lead to high rates of maternal and infant mortality. The WHO found that in Nigeria 29% of HCFs do not have access to safe water and toilets and 16% of HCFs do not have handwashing facilities with soap.

In May our Founder-President Mrs  Saraki launched a global WASH campaign in Abuja at a meeting with Dr. Wondi Alemu, WHO Representative and Head of Mission in Nigeria, working with partners including Global Water 2020, an initiative based in Washington D.C. which is designed to accelerate progress toward water access and security for all people in developing countries. A key element of that partnership is advocacy for improved WASH standards, both in Nigeria and around the world. 

In June we carried out a fact-finding and advocacy mission to Washington D.C. to take part in multilateral meetings with the US State Department, the World Bank, and members of the United States Congress. In August, as the United Nations marked International Youth Day, the WBFA took its pioneering PSHE and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) education programme to schoolchildren in Ogun State, Nigeria. 

The WBFA’s programme is based on its Adolescent Skills and Drills, Personal Social and Health Education Curriculum, the first locally-developed PSHE curriculum, which is formed of three core pillars – Your Rights and Your Body, Health Relationships, and Planning Your Future. Within those main areas an extensive range of topics pertinent to the health and wellbeing of young people are covered, with a focus on WASH.

The cohort of children, aged between 8 and 17 years old, were taught the WHO standard of hand washing techniques in addition to further break-out sessions, in line with the commitment of the WBFA to support the attainment of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. This pilot, which took place over two days, educated 237 children at the Ogun State Summer Camp, before an anticipated roll-out across the state and throughout Nigeria. 

Last month we partnered with Unilever Lifebuoy Nigeria and Sightsavers to improve hygiene practices to impact more than 2 million children over the following 12 months. 

The partnership will work on programmes which promote hygiene messages and prevent disease, advancing critical hygiene interventions such as handwashing with soap, addressing the issue of child illnesses and mortality due to preventable diseases.

Thank you for your attention and I look forward to hearing how we can be a great frontline health partner for you all.