Nurses partner Unilever to tackle maternal mortality, improve Children’s Healthcare

Nurses have entered apartnership agreement with Unilever Nigeria to help deliver the right level of healthcare services to children and child-bearing mothers across the country. 

The Nurses, under the aegis of National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, NANNM, said the partnership is aimed at taking healthcare services to families and children down to the grass root level through them (the Nurses).

The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding occasioned the donations of 50 cases of Vaseline to the Association for onward distribution to the public.

Coming together, the Nurses believe that they can do something better for the masses in the area of health promotion, ailment prevention, early detection and treatment of certain diseases and then providing professional advices on certain areas to rehabilitate these people. 

“We are doing this to empower our people and you know with health, wealth will come easily,’’ the National President of NANNM, Comrade AdenijiAbdurafiu Alani, said.

Addressing newsmen in Lagos,the Brand Building Director, Unilever Nigeria, Mr. David Okeme said that Unilever is collaborating with NANNM as part of efforts in making the right health information available to parents to be able to take care of their children and such information can be effectively disseminated through the help of nurses.

According to him,‘’Nurses play a very big role in the community. From research it has been established that before people even showed up in the hospital, a lot of them must have made several visits or made several conversations with theirfamily nurses. That is how important they are in terms of the role they play within the community and as such, our mission is to take health awareness to millions of consumers. If we achieve that through the nurses, who have the right level of connection with the community, that is one big objective achieved.

“We have a strong school programme that we run where we teach children the right behaviours. Hopefully that begins to put the right habits into them and prepares them for adulthood. We also have a fantastic portfolio of brands, thus, we are giving consumers the tools that they need to live well.Today, while signing the agreement, we are celebrating two of our brands that have made this possible:  Vaseline and petroleum jelly, the world purest and oldest brand on the market of jellies. And we have Pears, the nation’s number one baby care in the country. These brands have created this platform,’’ David said.

Speaking further, the National President of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, Comrade AdenijiAbdurafiu Alani said, ‘’ As a trade union and association, our main focus is to cater for our members and make the services of our members valuable to the public. In an attempt to do this, we collaborate with people and organisations like Unilever, a corporate entity that is doing similar things.

 “We believe that with our collaboration, people who are most vulnerable like women of child bearing age and children of school age will benefit a lot. And without them being cared for, the health indices of the country will be nose divingas children are so vulnerable because they are prone to certain preventable diseases which include worm infestation, malaria and any form of endemic diseases that are predominant in Africa,” he said.