By Grace Orok
The Founder of a Non Governmental Organization, Development Option (DO) Dr. Daniel Uduak has advised the Cross River State Government to be all-inclusive and recognize the role of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) and they should be allowed to operate with a given limit or scope in other to have healthy women in the society.
Uduak stated this at the Organizations 20th anniversary which held at the NGO’s office in Mayne Avenue, Calabar South with the theme; “Staying Focused, Overcoming Challenges and Attaining Sustainability”.
Dr. Udauk, the Founder and Program Director, also shared the vision of the organization which she said is “The pursuance of the overall development of women and youths anywhere in Africa on issues and trends that affect them and offering useful tools for affirmative change.”
According to her, “Our main focus is on health, education, and economic empowerment and our strong points are the integration of services such as the Community Empowerment Project (CEP) and Community Maternal Health Project (CMHP) and the use of already existing community structures and institutions to drive successful implementation of interventions”, she said, enunciating that community and religious leaders are the change agents they work closely with to reach their goals.
The Program Manager, Ukeme-Ubong Udo while addressing journalists revealed that under the Women Trauma Counseling Initiative (an esteem project of the organization), aimed at reducing gender based violence and creating safe space for vulnerable girls and women, they had a target to reach 5552 pregnant women but were able to reach and even surpass their target, reaching a total number of 5618 pregnant women.
“We saw their vulnerability of not opening up and came up with the WTC initiative. We have been able to reach out to the youths to come up with informed choices of going to school, picking up one trade or the other and have been able to create awareness about free health facilities available”, she stated.
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