“Womb shapes future health” — Don warns Nigeria’s maternal deaths may fuel diabetes, heart disease epidemic

Nigeria’s maternal health crisis isn’t just killing women in childbirth. It may be programming the next generation for diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, a professor of perinatal obstetrics has warned.

Delivering Ambrose Alli University’s 145th inaugural lecture, Prof. Reuben Agbons Eifediyi said conditions in the womb leave “a permanent biological signature” that outlives delivery.

His warning centres on Nigeria’s grim numbers: nearly 20% of global maternal deaths with just 1% of the world population. That’s 917 deaths per 100,000 live births — about 40,000 women yearly. Lifetime risk for a Nigerian woman: 1 in 22. Up to 80% of those deaths are preventable.

But Eifediyi’s focus wasn’t only mortality. Speaking on _The Child is the Father of the Man_, he argued that maternal nutrition, stress, and illness during pregnancy can permanently reset a baby’s metabolism.

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Citing Barker’s hypothesis — the developmental origins of health and disease — he said babies deprived in utero adapt to survive. Those same adaptations later raise their risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease when they grow up in calorie-rich environments.

“Low birth weight should be treated not simply as a neonatal concern but as an early warning sign for adult non-communicable disease,” he said. “The fetus is not a blank slate.” Every nutritional gap or stressor in pregnancy may alter lifelong health.

He linked preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction, and preterm labour to “defective placentation” — a faulty placenta disrupting the link between mother and baby. In short: poor maternal care today shapes tomorrow’s chronic disease burden.

Eifediyi’s policy push: shift from emergency obstetrics to pre-conception and early pregnancy care. He called for stronger maternal nutrition programs, earlier screening for high-risk pregnancies, use of biomarkers for obstetric complications, and focus on the first 1,000 days — conception to age two — as the key window for organ and brain development.

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He also referenced Lassa fever research at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital. Placental samples from infected mothers tested strongly positive for the virus, with severe outcomes for both mother and fetus. The point: maternal health is both an emergency and a developmental issue.

“No society can attain true greatness when its women continue to die in the process of giving life,” Eifediyi said. A healthy pregnancy, he argued, is “one of the most powerful forms of preventive medicine available to any country.”

Vice-Chancellor Prof. Eunice Omonzejie used the lecture to highlight AAU’s academic revival. She praised Eifediyi’s work in maternal and child health and pointed to recent wins: three Law graduates bagged First Class at the Nigerian Law School. The Faculty of Social Sciences also hosted a conference on AI, while the National Association of Women Academics ran a health outreach for staff.

Omonzejie called the inaugural series a showcase of “years of rigorous scholarship,” urging the audience to draw lessons for research, policy, and practice.