The Nigerian government has officially begun paying women to attend antenatal clinic hoping that it will increase the demand for a growing range of maternal and child health services, whilst cutting down the number of women dying from childbirth complications.
Under the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme, each woman will be eligible for the sum of N5,000, accruing from the point of registering for antenatal clinic during pregnancy.
They get N1,000 for each of four antenatal visits, plus "N2,000 when she comes to deliver and N1,000 when she brings her child to hospital" for immunisation, said Minister of State for Health Muhammad Ali Pate.
Launching the pilot CCT programme at a health centre in Dei Dei, Bwari Area Council, Abuja, Pate said the scheme was neither a handout nor a compensation.
He called it a "modest effort to incentivise our women to seek care" and change behaviour towards getting basic health services.
Impressive but just a start
More than one million women attended antenatal clinic in government supported facilities, a record the minister called "impressive but just a beginning."
Pate said the attendance helped prevent up to 218,000 preventable causes of mortality.
"Nigeria is beginning to make progress towards reducing maternal mortality but change takes time," he noted.
He called on state and local governments to "complement what the federal government is putting in" by investing in the CCT, which is funded from funds pulled off fuel subsidy—the Subsidy Reinvestment Programme.
"We have a vested interest to see that the [money pulled directly from increase in fuel pump price] is well utilised," Pate said.
He also called on community leaders to demand accountability by needing to "know how is coming in, how much is being used and what it is being used for."
The CCT comes three years after the Midwives Service Scheme was launched by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency to increase the spread of skilled health workers to areas lacking frontline health providers.