The Federal Government has launched the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Nigeria Programme, a major public health initiative designed to establish the actual causes of child and newborn deaths and translate scientific findings into measures capable of preventing avoidable fatalities.
Unveiled in Abuja, the programme brings together community-based death surveillance and advanced laboratory investigations to provide reliable evidence on why children die. The data are expected to help government and health authorities identify gaps in healthcare delivery, strengthen policies, improve clinical practice and channel investments towards interventions with the greatest potential to save lives.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, described CHAMPS as an important component of the Federal Government’s renewed drive to reduce maternal, newborn and child mortality under the Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative.
Pate, who was represented at the event by the Director of Health Promotion in the ministry, Dr John Uruakpa, said the programme would help Nigeria move beyond simply documenting deaths to establishing their underlying causes and taking concrete steps to prevent similar tragedies.
“Every death must count, every lesson must lead to action, and every action must save lives,” he said.
According to the minister, CHAMPS would complement the existing Maternal, Perinatal and Child Death Surveillance and Response (MPCDSR) system and the Maternal Mortality Reduction Innovation Initiative (MAMI).
While those programmes provide important surveillance and response mechanisms, he explained that CHAMPS would add definitive laboratory evidence to help determine the biological causes of deaths.
Pate said bringing the three initiatives together would strengthen disease surveillance, improve clinical standards and accountability, and provide policymakers with stronger evidence for decisions affecting maternal and child health.
Nigeria’s neonatal mortality remains a major concern
In her keynote address, the Special Adviser to the President on Health, Dr Salma Ibrahim Anas, acknowledged progress in reducing child mortality but warned that deaths during the neonatal period remain a major challenge requiring urgent and sustained intervention.
She said approximately 41 newborns die for every 1,000 live births in Nigeria. That means roughly one in every 24 babies does not survive the first 28 days of life, a rate considerably higher than the Sustainable Development Goal target of fewer than 12 neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030.
Anas identified poor-quality maternal and newborn care, inadequate emergency services, insufficient oxygen supplies and neonatal equipment, infections, prematurity and unequal access to skilled birth attendance among factors contributing to the deaths.
The challenge, she stressed, is particularly pronounced in rural and underserved communities, where access to quality maternal and newborn services can be limited.
She cautioned, however, that simply expanding access to healthcare would not be sufficient to reverse the trend. Health facilities, she said, must have adequately trained personnel, essential medicines, functional equipment and effective referral systems to ensure that mothers and newborns receive timely care when complications arise.
“Every newborn should be treated not simply as a statistic, but as a signal of where our health system failed to provide timely, quality care,” she said.
CHAMPS to investigate deaths around the clock
The Executive Director and Network Principal Investigator of the CHAMPS Network, Dr Cynthia Whitney, said Nigeria’s participation in the global surveillance network was significant given the country’s high burden of stillbirths and child mortality.
Whitney said evidence from nearly 11,000 child death investigations carried out across CHAMPS sites in Africa and South Asia indicated that about four out of every five child deaths could be prevented through improvements in healthcare quality and stronger public health programmes.
She explained that CHAMPS employs a comprehensive approach to investigating deaths, operating around the clock and working with hospitals, researchers, community leaders and religious leaders.
The investigations, she said, are conducted respectfully and are intended not merely to establish the circumstances surrounding individual deaths, but also to identify preventable factors and systemic weaknesses that can inform public health action.
Whitney noted that evidence generated by the surveillance network had already supported improvements in government policies, contributed to World Health Organisation estimates and helped development partners identify and finance interventions likely to have the greatest impact.
“The data are only valuable if they lead to action. The real work starts now,” she said.
Bauchi, Cross River to host initial sites
CHAMPS Nigeria will initially operate through surveillance sites in Bauchi and Cross River states.
The sites are expected to generate timely and scientifically validated information that can be used to identify the leading causes of child and newborn deaths, expose weaknesses in healthcare delivery and guide interventions at both state and national levels.
The Federal Government hopes that the evidence generated through the programme will strengthen disease surveillance and health planning while helping healthcare providers and policymakers better understand where and why preventable deaths occur.
Beyond determining causes of death, the programme is expected to create a stronger feedback loop between evidence and action—ensuring that lessons from communities and health facilities translate into improvements in healthcare services.
With Nigeria continuing to face a significant burden of maternal, newborn and child deaths, stakeholders said the success of CHAMPS would ultimately depend on how effectively the evidence it produces is converted into better services, stronger systems and timely interventions.
The programme therefore represents a shift from merely counting deaths to investigating them scientifically and using the lessons learned to prevent future loss of life.