Experts in family planning have said that despite the adoption of safe motherhood practices, the maternal mortality rate in Nigeria continues to be “obscenely high.”
To decrease maternal fatalities, the experts said, the country must enhance the usage of family planning programs.
They added that in order to meet the goals of the Nigeria Family Planning 2030 agenda, the country’s current prevalence rate of modern contraceptives, which stands at 12 percent, must be improved to 27 percent through coordinated efforts.
Speaking at the recent Launch of Community-Oriented DMPA-SC/Self Injection Acceleration in Nigeria and Self-Care Accelerator Projects and Dissemination of the Resilient Accelerated Scale-up of DMPA-SC Self-Injection in Nigeria, experts said that more people using family planning services would help to ensure a low death rate and a healthy population.
Gynecologist and obstetrician, Prof. Oladapo Ladipo, said, “We have done fairly well in family planning but we have not done enough. If you remember the Millennium Development Goals, we did not achieve any of them, yet family planning is the single thing that could help us achieve the majority of the MDGs.
“Now we have the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, and if we do not accelerate our efforts to increase the use of family planning, which we know is safe and effective and helps to moderate our population growth, we will not achieve any of the SDGs by 2030.
“We need to increase our advocacy efforts to ensure that the government increases funding for family planning. My recommendation for funding for family planning is that $4m should be increased to $50m because it is for about 50 million women of reproductive age. $1 per woman is not too much.
He continued; “Maternal death is still very high in Nigeria despite the safe motherhood programmes that have been initiated over the years. It’s a shame that we are still having three digits, roughly 512 per 100,000 deliveries, which is very shameful in 2023.
“Yet, family planning can help us to reduce that within a short period. This is why every woman must plan a family. The days when you will receive a cow for having 10 children are gone.”
The use of self-care interventions, according to the country’s coordinator for John Snow Incorporated, Dr. Adewole Adefalu, has the potential to increase Nigeria’s prevalence of modern contraceptives, which would save money and hasten the country’s progress toward achieving universal health coverage.
Adefalu said; “Self-care will empower women and men, families, and communities to carry out effective health actions, with or without support from health care providers. The value proposition of self-care lies in the opportunity to support healthcare systems. When fully introduced, self-care reduces the burden on healthcare providers, limiting their role to initiating, educating, and supporting individuals who are more empowered to take effective health action.”
The Association for Reproductive and Family Health introduced and put into effect the Resilient and Accelerated Scale-up of DMPA-SC Self-Injection project, he added, in an effort to assist the government in increasing the uptake of family planning.
He said “DMPA Subcutaneous and Self-Injection have the potential to expand access and acceptability with the unique option to self-inject. The project was implemented through the project communities and facilities across 10 project states cut across 217 Local Government Areas.”
The projects will aid in achieving and accelerating the uptake of family planning services, according to Dr. Kehinde Osinowo, chief executive officer of the ARFH.
She said, “With the poverty level in the country, many women do not want to get pregnant, and access to family planning services and methods will help them to reduce the birth rate.
“Also, the troubling aspect is that young people that are sexually active and want to use family planning methods constitute about 48 percent, but they don’t have access to the methods, and DMPA-SC has the potential to increase the uptake of family planning by three percent on an annual basis, if all states are embracing it,” Osinowo added.
The provision and use of reproductive health and family planning services, according to the director of the Federal Ministry of Health’s Reproductive Health Division, Mrs. Tinu Taylor, will enhance the lives of women, girls, men, families, communities, and the nation as a whole.
“It will significantly contribute to the decrease of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality as well as other health indices including unsafe abortions, HIV transmission, among others.”
