Governor Seyi Makinde started systematically addressing the mortality rate in Oyo State as early as 2019 at the inception of his administration. He launched the Free Health Mission for residents of the state’s 33 local governments and urged council chairmen to allocate 7.5% of their budgets to the Primary Health Care Service. His administration has focused on building, completing, renovating, upgrading, and equipping more Primary Health Care facilities in Oyo State, which is a good start to enable easy access to high-quality health care services in the State.

With the involvement of community leaders and religious leaders, Governor Seyi Makinde introduced Community Based Health Insurance at the community level. As such, the inclusion of workers from the informal sector, including market women, groups or associations, and artisans, as well as local government employees, in the state’s insurance programme. The Governor ensured he provided affordable healthcare for Oyo State residents so as to effectively tackle mortality in the State.

To reduce mother and child mortality rates in the State, the Tomo Ti’ya Initiative was successfully introduced by the Governor. It is a revolutionary healthcare system in Oyo State, and the initiative is designed to make it easier to access high-quality maternity and child health services. The Oyo State Government, through its Primary Health Care Board, disclosed plans to embark on an integrated measles campaign for children between the ages of 9 months and 5 years.

The vaccination exercise, which would cut across all thirty-three local government areas in the State, which commenced October 20th October 2022, integrates other vaccines apart from measles, like polio, vitamin A supplement, among others and assures that the vaccines are completely safe to be administered.

The Oyo State Government has also inaugurated the State Immunization Task Force Committee in a bid to reduce the number of unimmunized children in the State, and provide preventive healthcare services to rural residents. The task force is a platform for inter-sectoral groups to support the ongoing efforts of the Seyi Makinde-led administration to cater for the well-being of the residents of Oyo State. It should be noted that the Seyi Makinde-led administration is paying great attention to the health of the citizens and ensuring that every child is vaccinated.

The Oyo State Government has appealed to corporate bodies and the private sector to emulate the initiative of the State Government in extending maternal leave by six months to working mothers. This appeal was made in a briefing to commemorate this year’s World Breastfeeding Week with the theme, “Step Up for Breastfeeding: Educate and Support,” which was organised by the State Primary Health Care Board. This initiative to extend the maternal leave of working mothers is said to be in line with international best practices on exclusive breastfeeding and to promote healthy living for working mothers and their babies.

When it comes to deaths, mother and child mortality, Oyo State has no place ranking among the most affected states in Nigeria as a result of all the health care initiatives and efforts that the Governor has implemented to successfully tackle mortality rate in Oyo State.

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