Experts in the health sector have said that the COVID-19 pandemic have obstructed the country’s contraceptive supply chain causing shortages.
They called on government at all levels to prioritise family planning to reduce mortality resulting from unwanted pregnancies.
The experts say the potential increase in unintended pregnancies is owing to the diverted attention to containing the spread of the virus, noting that there is a need to adapt strategies for meeting contraceptive needs across the country.
They made the submission recently during an online training workshop for Nigeria Health Reporters and Features Writers, organized by Rotary Action Group for Reproductive, Maternal, and Child Health (RMCH) in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Health and the Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria.
According to available statistics, there are about 180–200 million pregnancies recorded globally every year, with 303,000 maternal deaths recorded per minute, with Nigeria contributing about 58,000 (19 percent) of the global death.
Meanwhile, UNFPA estimates that 47 million women may lose access to modern contraception if the situation continues for 6 months and could lead to nearly 7 million unintended pregnancies.
Josiah Mutihir, Obstetrics and Gynecology with University of Jos said contraceptive prevalence rate is very low in Nigeria with the huge number of about 200 million population noting COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the gross inadequacies of the Nigeria’s health infrastructure and restriction of movement has adversely affected the contraceptive supply chain.
Mutihir said that high rates of contraceptive discontinuation implies that family planning has little effect on total fertility rates reduction and could only bring about a high unmet need for contraception.
“Unmet need for family planning in Nigeria is high with about 32 percent, especially among adolescents, urban slums dwellers, refugees, women in the postpartum period who are sexually active during the covid- 19 pandemic,” he said.
Anas-Kolo, in her presentation of the Director and Division Head Reproductive Health, Federal Ministry of Health, Kayode Afolabi pointed that, while there was an increase in the proportion of facilities that provided family planning and Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) services during the start of year 2020, the coronavirus pandemic, have caused a drop of 14 percent.
“The decreasing 2020 numbers could be attributed to several factors including; patients’ reluctance to visit health facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic or the challenges with full commodity supply experienced across multiple states also owing to the pandemic delaying commodity replenishment at the state stores,” she said.
However, as part of Family Planning 2020 commitment, Nigeria has set a goal to increase the modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) to 27percent of all women—though it is still falling short at 12percent. Without full funding of the government’s annual commitment of $4 million (1.4 billion NGN), there could be significant shortage of contraceptives in 2019/2020.
Proffering solution, Oluwarotimi Akinola , president. Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria (SOGON), said an achievement of 27 percent Modern Contraceptive Prevalence rate (mCPR) in Nigeria will avert 578,250 unsafe abortions, 1.5million unintended pregnancies and save about 90,000 women lives.
“Family planning utmost priority would decrease maternal and infant mortality by 33 percent and 44 percent respectively, decrease complications of pregnancy and delivery, as well as prevent or reduce maternal age related incidence of genetic disease,” said Akinola.
He maintained that the socio-economic benefits of family planning include increasing educational and intellectual development of women and financial potential for families, as well as improvement in quality of life for the community, society and the country at large.
Anas-Kolo also said, all health facility workers should to return to work with personal protective equipment, attitudes of Health workers to patients in Public Health Facilities should be improved, adding that there is need to put in place mitigations to avoid prolonged interruption to health facility services to prevent very poor health indices especially RMNCAH+N activities.
“governments, civil societies, parliaments, health workers and journalists to commit to addressing the root causes of maternal death, improve the status of women through provision of universal basic education, provision of universal health care, promotion of adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights, as well as increase in the national contraceptive prevalence rate and relaxation of the restrictive abortion laws,”Akinola said.
