Stakeholders Rally at NISONM Conference to Cut Newborn Deaths

Mary Nnah

Government officials, paediatricians, and development partners gathered in Port Harcourt for the opening of NISONM’s week-long 18th Annual Conference, where an innovation expert challenged Nigeria’s neonatal doctors to stop waiting for foreign researchers to solve African problems.

The 18th Annual General and Scientific Conference of the Nigerian Society of Neonatal Medicine (NISONM) opened in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, 17th June, with a clear message from government officials, professional bodies, and development partners: Nigeria’s newborns are dying at a rate the country can no longer accept, and closing that gap will require every stakeholder in the room to act together.

The week-long conference, holding at the Golden Tulip Hotel under the theme “Closing the Gap towards Achieving the Newborn-Related Sustainable Development Goals,” drew an audience of neonatologists, paediatricians, nurses, midwives, federal and state health officials, and representatives of international development agencies.

The occasion was chaired by Professor Chituru Orluwene, Chief Medical Director of the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), who, in his opening remarks, reiterated the importance of the conference and thanked NISONM for convening it at what he described as a critical moment in the nation’s effort to address its high neonatal mortality rate (NMR). He commended the Society for sustaining a platform that brought clinicians and policymakers into direct conversation on a critical and timely issue.

In her address, Professor Iretiola Fajolu, President of NISONM, spoke at length about the urgency of reducing Nigeria’s neonatal mortality rate, currently estimated at 41 deaths per 1,000 live births according to the 2024 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. She enjoined all stakeholders present — government, clinicians, development partners, and professional associations — to put their efforts together rather than work in silos, stressing that progress against the SDG target would not be possible without coordinated, concerted action across sectors.

She outlined the Society’s own contributions to that effort, including its involvement in developing new national framework documents released over the past year, which she said were designed to strengthen the standard of newborn care across the country’s health facilities. She said NISONM remained committed to supporting government’s efforts with clinical evidence, technical input, and advocacy, describing the Society as a willing and active partner in the national push to reduce newborn deaths.

A representative of the Minister of Health, Dr. Ahmed Mohammed, Director of Family Health at the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, spoke on behalf of the Minister and detailed the range of efforts the Ministry is making to reduce under-five mortality, with particular emphasis on the newborn period. He spoke extensively about the Maternal and Neonatal Mortality Reduction Innovation and Initiative (MAMII), the federal government’s flagship programme targeting local government areas with the highest burden of maternal and newborn deaths, and outlined other ongoing reforms within the Ministry’s broader child survival strategy.

The Permanent Secretary of the Rivers State Ministry of Health also addressed delegates, bringing the perspective of the host state and reaffirming the state government’s commitment to supporting newborn health initiatives within its health facilities.
Goodwill messages were delivered by representatives of UNICEF, the Paediatric Association of Nigeria, the Rivers State Ministry of Health, and the National Association of Nurses and Midwives, each commending NISONM for convening the conference and pledging continued collaboration with the Society and government toward reducing newborn deaths nationally.
The highpoint of the ceremony was the conference’s keynote address delivered by Dr. Obichi Obiajunwa, a seasoned innovation and development expert, under the title “The Newborn as the True Test of Universal Health Coverage: Innovation, Systems, and Nigeria’s Race to the SDGs.” The address was delivered as the first Professor Raphael Oruamabo Annual Lecture, named for the late University of Port Harcourt scholar and the foundational president of NISONM.

Dr. Obiajunwa’s message built directly on the themes raised earlier in the morning by government and Society leadership, but pressed delegates further. Citing the same NDHS data referenced by the NISONM President, alongside World Bank and United Nations estimates placing Nigeria’s neonatal mortality rate between 34 and 41 deaths per 1,000 live births, he argued that the country remains two to three times above its 2030 SDG target. “If Universal Health Coverage cannot reach the first 28 days of life,” he told the gathering, “it is not universal. It is preferential.”

He credited the federal government with constructing what he called “the strongest UHC architecture Nigeria has ever had,” referencing the National Health Insurance Authority Act of 2022, the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, and MAMII — the same initiative the ministerial representative had detailed earlier. But he argued that this architecture has a critical blind spot: newborn-specific interventions such as phototherapy machines, resuscitation equipment, and continuous positive airway pressure devices for premature babies are not explicitly listed and fully covered in national insurance benefit packages or tied to facility funding standards. “The track is built,” he said, “but it has no lane marked for the newborn. What is not named in a policy cannot be claimed at a facility.”

A warm moment in the address came when Dr. Obiajunwa paid tribute to an EU-funded research project he is personally involved in: ACROBAT-Newborns, a Horizon Europe initiative developing a point-of-care diagnostic device to help frontline clinicians triage sick newborns more accurately. He praised the Barcelona-based consortium behind the project, ISGlobal, for designing the device specifically for African clinical conditions rather than adapting an existing foreign model, and thanked the European Union for backing African health innovation with serious funding. “That is what genuine partnership looks like,” he told delegates.

But he quickly turned the moment into a challenge. “If a team in Barcelona can look at our newborn mortality data and build something this ambitious, what is stopping us?” he asked. “We are the ones living this problem daily. We have the clinical insight no outsider can replicate.” He told the room that ACROBAT should be seen not as an exception but as proof of what is possible — and a new standard for Nigerian clinicians to set for themselves. “The next ACROBAT,” he said, “should carry the Nigerian brand on it.”

He called on NISONM to establish what he termed a “Clinical Innovation Programme” — a structured platform through which Nigerian clinicians could document the everyday inefficiencies they encounter on the ward, develop solutions, and connect with funding and mentorship, building the same institutional capacity that allowed ACROBAT to succeed. “The problems are ours,” he told delegates. “The knowledge is ours. The solutions must be ours too.”

Closing his address, Dr. Obiajunwa returned to the conference’s namesake lecture. “We do not start from zero,” he said. “We start from the distance Professor Oruamabo and others before us have already covered.” He left delegates with a single instruction to carry out of the hall: to name the newborn in every policy, every budget line, and every facility standard they touch, and for clinicians specifically, to name the everyday problems they witness and bring them back to their professional society. “The finish line is twelve deaths per thousand,” he said. “Let us run.”

The opening ceremony set the tone for what organisers describe as a packed week ahead, with NISONM’s 18th Annual General and Scientific Conference continuing in Port Harcourt through the end of the week.