Founder Adepeju Mabadeje (second from left) with volunteers

The Brown Button Foundation

The Brown Button Foundation aims to fight head on the root causes of maternal mortality in Nigeria, recognizing that pregnant women in Nigeria have become endangered species.

The Foundation was formed in 2011 to help curb the high infant and maternal mortality rates recorded in Nigeria –  thereby saving more lives, provide support for pregnant women, and advocating for their reproductive rights. Its main beneficiaries are women, girls, and health service providers.

According to the 2011 Maternal Health Task Force Info graphics, Nigeria loses an alarming 36,666 women yearly to maternal related deaths.
(ref: Maternal Health Task Force's website – an organisation that contributes to shaping collective efforts to improve maternal health nationwide).

In rural areas, the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) puts the rate at 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births.  We train traditional birth attendants, establish a ‘refer and reward’ system for them to encourage timely referrals, sensitize the populace, and equip or upgrade delivery facilities at health centers.

The country is faced with poverty due to corruption with high maternal mortality due to harmful traditional and cultural beliefs relating to childbirth, as well as failing infrastructures. 

Traditional and cultural beliefs include:

• People believing that childbirth is an exercise  requiring more spiritual attention than skilled health care personnel, so they will rather go to the unskilled traditional spiritualist to deliver, than visit the hospital.
• Delibrately refusing to visit the hospital in order to follow family traditions of giving birth at a traditional birth attendant center.
• Believing that no one can put a cap to the number of children they can have because they are a gift from God – thereby increasing high-risk pregnancies and maternal deaths.
• Nigeria's failing infrastructures are: the lack of hospitals and basic ammenities such as water, electricity, mattress bedsheets, and even mosquitoe nets at most of the hospitals in the rural areas.

Brown Button Foundation has been able to commence the extension and upgrade of a health center and provision of delivery facilities in Latawa community.

The foundation has also commenced the training of birth attendants in Nigeria starting with Ogun state. Family planning methods and training are also rendered.