The World Contraceptives Days is marked yearly to draw attention to the urgent need for family planning services as a tool in promoting economic development and in providing quality healthcare. It is also a veritable service in tackling maternal mortality in many countries.
In Akwa Ibom State, the World Contraceptives Day was marked with a lineup of activities to bring to the forefront the contributions of family planning to the wellbeing of the family, how partners and the state government should work together in making family planning available to those who require such services
Family Planning can provide an avenue in allowing a family to have children by choice and not by “accident.”
With Akwa Ibom State having one of the highest mortality rates of 872 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in the South-South region of the country, experts believe that family planning services, if effectively deployed, can drastically reduce this alarming trend by 30 percent.
It can also be a tool to ensure quality healthcare, if the services are made readily available in the state as many of the partners including The Challenge Initiative (TCI), Nigeria Reproductive Choices and the Planned Parenthood Federation among others have been actively working in the state to assist to improve the health of the people using family planning. While TCI in operating in 10 Local Government Areas of the state, NRC is active in 16 LGAs leaving a gap in the coverage of the state which 31 local government councils.
Apart from providing services, TCI is known to have engaged 60 community mobilisers to raise awareness on family planning and its benefits, is has trained health workers and renovated many health facilities in the state.
Family planning services are made available in various ways particularly in the use of many commodities and consumables, according to experts. The methods are many and include pills, inflatable implant, male condom and female condom.
Others include exclusive breastfeeding method, tubal ligation and vasectomy as well as Intrauterine Device (IUD).
These methods are tailored to suit individual needs, according to health experts while any of them can be adjusted at any time or changed. The consumables are like less tangible provisions like soap, water, needles that are required in the course of making use of the commodities.
While the vasectomy is an effective permanent method for men who do not want their partners to get pregnant again, the tubal ligation is an effective permanent method for women who do not also want to get pregnant any longer.
As important as these services are and being provided by the partners, there is a growing concern about would happen when the partners who are operating in a selected local government areas would have completed their tenure.
For instance TCI is expected to end its programmes by next year and this presents an immediate challenge in supply of both the commodities and the consumables.
This is particularly worrisome in many ways. First, there is usually no budget for family planning services in the state according to checks and even when there was a budget line, releases have never been made. Even the state government’s contribution to the Basic Healthcare Development Fund, where the Federal Governments makes counterpart funding to procure family planning commodities for states, Akwa Ibom State is not known to have contributed to the fund.
Secondly, there is an alarming dearth of healthcare professionals in the state. A visit to a health facility in Oti Oron recently revealed that there was only one health worker in the entire health facility. There was no nurse except a community health worker who was in charge of running all the services at the centre. The family planning health worker comes from a facility at the council headquarters. Even though many of the families were eager to embrace family planning to enable them space their children, the absence of training personnel was a major hindrance.
In Uyo, the state capital, a health facility located at Ewet, though recently renovated, has no ambulance for emergency services. The health worker there lamented the challenge of responding to deliveries and referrals in the night. In addition, the health facility has no perimeter fence which makes it a thorough fare for the community to trespass even at night.
The dearth of health workers has also forced the state government to approve additional years for nurses and other health workers who were due for retirement. This means that health’s who were due for retirement had their tenures extended for additional two years. Whether the decision by the state government would enhance productivity has yet to be seen.
Also, it is pretty tasking to understand why the state government cannot recruit young and fresh health workers into its employ even it’s large monthly allocation from the federation account.
The state-owned school of nursing and midwifery which was recently upgraded to a college of nursing turns out hundreds of nurses each year yet the state government has been unable to announce the recruitment of nurses and other health workers.
Family planning services should be free, according to experts, it is a low hanging fruit in curbing maternal mortality, women should be allowed to have children by choice and not by chance. Family planning helps to ensure that women have children because they can, not because it happened,’’ experts say.
In Akwa Ibom state, the challenge remains how the state government can leverage on the contributions of partners to make family planning services more accessible thereby tackle the onerous issue of high maternal ratio.
The fear here is that when the partners end their activities in the state, Akwa Ibom may be the worst off in terms of the uptake of family planning services.
Deploying family planning is one sure way of improving the health of the people who are within the child bearing age bracket and in the long run reduce the high number of maternal mortality in the state.
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