By Mary Jalingo
The use of contraceptives for child spacing by women benefits both the mother, father, children and the entire family. A gynaecologist with the Jummai Babangida Aliyu Maternal and Neonatal Hospital in Niger State, Dr Aminu Magaji stated this during a one day media stakeholders meeting on child spacing organised by Pathfinder International.
He stated that family planning/child spacing is not abortion as conceived by many, saying using contraceptives work by prevention of fertilization. Dr Magaji noted that any child that lost his/her mother during childbirth has 50 per cent of survival.
He said about three million women who escaped dying as a result of pregnancy and childbirth went home with permanent disability and called for male involvement in family planning to encourage their wives to recover well before next pregnancy.
Also speaking, the family planning coordinator at the Niger State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NSPHCDA), Mrs Dorcas Abu Talatu, said family planning enables family to plan their families which she noted could help slow population growth.
She added that high population growth is a great concern for the state due to the already existing food insecurity, poor health and extreme poverty in the country.
Mrs Dorcas said survey data indicates that there is a high unmet need 22.4 per cent for Family Planning information and services in the state, adding that nearly 1 in 6, about 16 per cent married women ages from 15 to 49 will likely space or limit future birth but are not using any method of contraceptive
She said the Contraceptive Prevalent Rate (CPR) is 6.6 per cent including modern method which account for 5.6 per cent and traditional method 1% according to National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS 2013)
Dorcas commended the state government for the recently approval of N10 million out of N50 million allocated to Family Planning (FP) in the state and urged for the timely release of allocated funds to meet the challenges of limited number of trained providers and poor community based distribution network
Speaking earlier, the Country Director, Pathfinder International, Dr Faruk Jega represented by Dr Sakina Bello said that the program runs in twelve pilot states of the federation.
The Country Director noted that the objective of the workshop was aimed at getting participants to be acquainted with Pathfinder Advance Family Planning (AFP) project, to aid Journalists in the publication of family planning projects to meet the federal government 27 per cent target.
