Health is an issue that touches everyone, especially the most vulnerable among us – children. All over the world, infant mortality and children’s health have been emerging concerns while Government and World agencies are consistently developing strategies to address inadequate health care services. With about 60 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR), one would argue the insignificant pace at which children access medical services given that 10 million of the world’s children still die every day for lack of access to basic health care and adequate nutrition.

 
Article 24 of the Child’s Right Convention clearly states that Children have a right to good quality health care, clean water, nutritious food and a clean environment; a right which at best can be described as ‘fiction’ in this part of the country and the African continent in its entirety with the inadequate attention given to children by their parents and the community at large. State parties should recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health.

Stepping Stones Nigeria Child Empowerment Foundation (SSNCEF) has recently discovered that regardless of Government’s efforts to provide basic health care services for children and pregnant women, a significant population especially in very far-flung communities is yet to access these services owing to firm superstitious beliefs. It then follows that this group constitutes portending danger for the majority of Akwa Ibom children as this category forms the highest child bearing population. Most recently, SSNCEF has witnessed cases of mothers who have never immunized their children for reasons associated with superstition, hence buttressing the need for more awareness on the benefits of immunization and available medical services. The heartrending part is the needless pain and suffering borne by these innocent children as inflicted by their obstinate parents owing to the prevalent ignorance and poverty. Truth will not exonerate pastors who have turned the church to counterfeit hospitals with the intent of extorting and making profits from the ignorant populace. These ‘churches’ have coaxed ignorant mothers to disregard ante and post natal services even at the expense of their lives and that of the children. It has become common knowledge that every illness, carelessness, and inexplicable circumstance is attributed to the power of witchcraft or some spiritual misdemeanor as far as the average Ibibio man is concerned.