New Telegraph 
The Advisor for Options- Evidence For Action (E4A) Mama Ye Programme in Lagos State, Adenike Badiora has urged stakeholders in Lagos State to improve on the Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) services in the state. Badiora made the call during training on Gender Transformative Advocacy (GTA) aimed to build the capacity of members of the Lagos State Accountability Mechanism (LASAM) on RMNCAH.
The workshop was held in Ikeja, Lagos recently. Representatives from LASAM, a nongovernmental body comprising stakeholders in Evidence, Advocacy and Knowledge Management and Accountability Sub- Committees, attended the training. The programme was organised by Options- E4A with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in order to make sure that the trainees understand Gender Transformative Advocacy components of the RMNCAH and also to identify many gender, cultural and social norms that contribute negatively to the outcomes of adolescent and children within societies in Lagos state.
‘’The essence of this workshop is to build LASAM capacity to understand what are these root causes; what are these danger norms and once they are identified then they are able to critically look at the work that will be done to actually address these issues.” The aim of the Gender Transformative Advocacy is to actually reduce the inequalities and if possible eliminate the inequalities that exist between genders either male or female so that both can access quality healthcare services, so they can have improved health outcome and ultimately be able to fulfill their potentials as individuals in their various communities,” said Badiora.
The Advisor for the E4A Mama Ye Programme in Lagos State added that the process of supporting LASAM to identify these gender norms comes up with solutions and identifies specific stakeholders who can champion the process of bringing this transformative change within the communities.
“The changes would be affected even in the quality space in Lagos State so that these issues can be addressed through our traditional structures and subsequently improve the relationship and create equity and fairness to access health care resources in the state.” According to her, the product that will come out from this workshop in terms of the Gender Transformative Advocacy messages will be used by LASAM in generating evidence and will help the Knowledge Management & Communications subcommittee of LASAM to write objective stories with the evidences that they have seen from their analysis that has been done on gender issues as it relates to Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child & Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) in Lagos State.
“They will be able to use the information and the messages in their call to actions to write objective stories as well as write stories that can call for public action and specific stakeholders to also take actions that will address these deep- rooted gender norms that affect RMNCAH services in the state. These will spur stakeholders to take actions,” she concluded
