The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has been urged to deploy constitutional and legal means to ensure that breaches arising from maternal mortality are compensated for to stem the high rate of the scourge in Nigeria.

The guest speaker at the monthly webinar hosted by the Human Rights Institute of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Uchenna Emelonye, made the call in a presentation titled, ‘Maternal Mortality: Imperatives for National Human Rights Commission’.

Participants at the webinar were drawn globally from academia, civil society groups, human rights bodies and the media.

The session was moderated by a Professor of International Law and Head of the Human Rights Institute, Nsongurua Udombana.

Emelonye, a Visiting Professor of Law at Bournemouth University, United Kingdom and Professional Researcher at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, decried Nigeria’s current position as the country with the highest number of maternal mortality cases in Africa.

He highlighted statistics, which showed Nigeria’s abysmal poor performance on maternal health charts in Africa and the world, explaining that approximately 250 women die from maternal health issues in Nigeria on a daily basis.

“While the intention of this webinar is not to antagonise the government or its agencies over the high rate of maternal mortality cases in Nigeria, the presentation is meant to stimulate a discourse on the subject and procure the necessary attention that the topic rightly deserves as a human rights issue,” he said.

Emelonye noted that aside from being a public health crisis, maternal mortality is fundamentally a human rights issue.

According to him, “each maternal death represents a tragic failure to uphold a woman’s most basic rights – the right to life and the right to non-discrimination.”

He added: “Treating it as human rights breach will ensure that people and institutions are held accountable and remedies are provided to victims whenever such violations occur in the country, because each time a woman dies from childbirth, Section 33(1) of the Constitution is ostensibly violated and that is why the NHRC should take up litigation of such breaches on behalf of victims and their next of kin.”

Emelonye equally called for some drastic reforms in the women’s health delivery system in Nigeria, urging the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to closely oversee the Ministry of Health in the provision of maternal health services.

Other recommendations made by the human rights expert during the lecture are: Rebranding of maternal health services to maternal health rights; improvement of advocacy on women affirmative action and women empowerment; ensuring the conduct of national maternal health audit as well as regular audits; issue of national and state public reports on maternal mortality; naming and shaming of defaulting states and institutions as well as the introduction of Human Rights 101 course into medical/nursing educational curriculum in the country.

Maternal mortality, defined by the World Health Organisation as the death of a woman during pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, remains a grave global health challenge, particularly in developing nations.