On a quiet, frigid Sunday afternoon, Zainab Bala, a 24-year-old entrepreneur well into the third trimester of her second pregnancy, told the three women gathered in her home in Kano that she thought it was time to go to the hospital. She was taken to the Murtala Mohammed Hospital posthaste. Her husband, Mr Bala, also joined them in the clinic.
It took a while before the providers attended to Mrs Bala. When they did, a midwife handed a list to her husband to purchase the standard items required for conducting a delivery: surgical gloves, sutures, surgical blades, sanitary pads and detergents for cleaning. Mr Bala argued that maternal services should be free in the state’s general hospitals and, therefore, he would not buy anything.
He was adamant that the midwife was trying to cheat him until other men told him that they had all bought the same items for delivery. This type of misunderstanding happens regularly between health workers and patients in Kano public hospitals, PREMIUM TIMES learnt. The Kano State Government has a Free Maternal Health Care Policy, a plan that covers the costs of delivery and postnatal services in all secondary and tertiary health facilities but out-of-pocket spending is still common.
Initiated in 2001, the policy targets every pregnant woman in Kano with a full benefits package covering antenatal, delivery care, and postnatal care. The services involved in the free maternity care programme include free antenatal care (including card and antenatal .
