Infant mortality: FG, USAID to spend N400m on data generation

The Federal Government and the United States Agency for International Development will spend N400 million to generate data to determine the cause of deaths of children aged 0 to 5 years in Nigeria.

The Acting Chairman of the National Population Commission, Bimbo Salu-Hundeyin, said yesterday in Abuja that the counterpart fund would be used to carry out the 2019 Verbal and Social Autopsy Survey to get more insights on child mortality.

She said the most common causes of neonatal deaths in Nigeria were severe infections such as septicaemia, pneumonia and meningitis.

She said the exercise would be conducted nationwide from October 19 to December 18, 2019 to reveal more insights on the causes of child mortality.