Over 41,000 Nasarawa women embrace family planning – Health Ministry
The Nasarawa State Government has said no fewer than 41,000 women in rural and urban areas of the state are currently accessing family planning under the four-year IntegratE project.
Our correspondent reports that the IntegrateE project which is being implemented by the Society For Family Health, Population Council, and Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, among others is an initiative co-funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation targeted at increasing service delivery on Family Planning among Community Pharmacists and Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors.
Speaking at the IntegratE Mid-Project Dissemination meeting in Lafia on Friday, the Reproductive and Family Planning Coordinator of the State Ministry of Health, Salome Aya, explained that the statistics of over 41,000 was for women who were currently accessing family planning from the private CPs and PPMVs across the 13 Local Government Areas of the state.
Aya who was represented at the event by the Task Shifting and Task Sharing Coordinator of the IntegratE project, Esther Yonah, narrated that the state government had to give maximum support to the CPs and PPMVs to administer family planning to women in the state in order to tackle issues relating to maternal and child mortality.
She said, “This is the data that has been reported and it is quite good. With this data, we will keep improving and the state will soon reach its Contraceptive Prevalence Rate on family planning.
“The state government has shown its commitment by allowing Community Pharmacists and Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors to provide family planning and healthcare services to the people. Our aim is to reach the Contraceptive Prevalence Rate for family planning in the state.
“So far, the trained CPs and PPMVs are doing well, but we will be only able to fully rate their activities by the year 2026 when the IntegratE program will be closing in the state because it is a four-year project which commenced in the year 2022.”
On her part, the representative of the Society For Family Health and Program Information System Officer of the IntegratE project, Delafrida Ukaga, said the project had enabled women to have unhindered access to family planning irrespective of their locations in the state.
While explaining that the efforts of the organisation had greatly assisted in tackling the issues of maternal and child mortality in the state, Ukaga added that the CPs and PPMVs were also trained on how to do implants and injectables for family planning.
“We have one goal, and that is to improve maternal health and to decrease maternal mortality in Nigeria. Our goal with the IntegratE project is to improve access to family planning because we believe that no woman deserves to die while giving birth to a child,” she said.
Earlier in his remark, the Nasarawa State Commissioner for Health, Gaza Gwamna while commending the Society For Family Health and the other partners for the IntegratE project, reiterated the state government’s commitment to continue to support partners engaged in sexual reproductive health services in the state.
The Commissioner, represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, John Damina, further explained that the initiative was aimed at supporting women to assume greater power and control over their sexual and reproductive health by using several family planning methods through the CPs and PPMVs.
Family planning according to the United Nations is the information, means and methods that allow individuals to decide if and when to have children.
Our correspondent reports that representatives from the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, Nasarawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, World Health Organisation, and State Ministry of Information, among others, graced the event.
