Dr. Faisal Idris, city health officer, said the MNCHN is an approach adopted by the health department to reduce maternal and neonatal deaths and improve the health status of mothers and children in the country.
He said group discussions on crucial issues and concerns that affect the implementation of the MNCHN program as well as recommendations to improve it were undertaken during the three-day workshop.
Issues and concerns discussed were more related on human resource capacity such as lack of training, availability of logistics as well as family planning commodity during the implementation, and inadequacy of health facilities, Idris further said.
According to him, the integration of basic health services especially during outreach activities is among the strategies recommended by the participants.
Another recommendation, he said, is the involvement of the private sector and religious leaders in the effective implementation of various health programs.
Their support is of paramount importance especially the religious leaders in terms of advocating the family planning program considering the unique culture here, he underscored.
He added that the support and commitment of the local government units especially at the barangay level was also identified as an approach to strengthen the maternal and child healthcare in the city.
The same workshop on scaling-up MNCHN interventions was also conducted in the five provinces of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
ARMM is among the regions which contribute to the high percentage of maternal and neonatal deaths in the country and dragging its performance in terms of achieving the MDGs of reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating infectious as well as re-emerging diseases.
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