Woman with newborn and healthcare provider at the maternity home

St. Kizito Clinic Opens A Maternity Home in Nigeria

Loving Gaze, Nigeria, announced the opening of a 24-hour maternity home St. Kizito Clinic, Jakande Housing Estate, Lekki, focused on professional and skilled care of women and newborns.
Barbara Pepoli

Loving Gaze is pleased to announce the opening of the 24–hour maternity home at the St. Kizito Clinic, Jakande Housing Estate, Lekki. The maternity home has nine well trained and experienced midwives, and a gynaecologist. The space, exclusively dedicated to the Maternity Home, was built to welcome women in a comfortable, sterile, warm and professional atmosphere. Our medical staff is constantly trained and supervised by St. Kizito Medical Director, Dr. Alda Gemmani, to support our patients, both medically and psychologically.

The facility consists of a waiting room, delivery room, labour room equipped with delivery beds, O2 cylinder, ultrasound machine, surgeon adjustable tools, baby warming lamps, and a lying-in ward with five bed and five baby cribs.

The new ultrasound machine we recently acquired, allowing us to have a complete fetus assessment and print quality image of the anatomy scanned- GE Logiq V5 -acquires precise image in 3D technology, providing accuracy in measurement and color Doppler for the following exams with the 3 different probes: Abdominal, Obstetrical, Gynecological Vascular/peripheral vascular, Transcranial Pediatric, Musculoskeletal, Urological, Cardiac and Biopsy. On top of all, the availability of a stand by 45 KVA generating set ensures that the maternity home has power supply round the clock.

Dr. Gemmani writes, “Our Maternity Home wants, first of all, welcome pregnant women and their new born with love and care. Each of them is a unique person living a special moment, they deserve the best loving and professional care.

Room in the maternity home facility

St. Kizito Clinic has provided basic health care for the unprivileged communities in Lagos for the last 25 years, offering daily consultations, treatment of common and communicable diseases, x-ray and ultrasound, laboratory exams, dentist and ophthalmologist care. But we also always cared for women, with a gynaecologist, ante and post natal service, immunization, pharmacy dispensing and children nutrition centre. In all these years we noticed that most of the pregnant women we assisted opted to give birth either through Traditional Birth Assistance (TBA) or home birth, and this is the case for most women in the country.

According to the WHO reports of 2013, in Nigeria, only 4 in 10 births are delivered with the assistance of a skilled provider, placing Nigeria among the countries with the highest maternity mortality rate. This evidence, along with the demands of the women we assisted, convinced us to open the Maternity Home. Our objective is to offer professional, caring and loving maternity and delivery services to pregnant women, at an affordable cost. We welcome women with low risk delivery, while women with high-risk delivery are referred to an accredited hospital or medical facility.”

Thus we are indeed most grateful to SNEPCo/NNPC for their continuous support: in 2013, SNEPCo, renovated buildings, donated an ambulance as well as furniture and medical equipment. In 2014, to tackle oral disease, SNEPCo helped us to set up a Dental Unit. In 2015 they agreed to work on the development of the Maternity Unity St Kizito Clinic in Jakande Estate, contributing immensely to make it a reality for all our women.