Tuesday 11 July 2017

Planning Ones Family Combats Poverty

…Funds in Lagos State remains static since 2013
Rebecca Ejifoma 

Experts have analysed and concluded that for Nigeria to attain Sustainable Development Goal 1 – ending poverty by 2030 – her citizens needed to embrace one use of Family Planning method or the other to avoid spending over budget or begging for a living.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), there are 18 SDGs targeted to be achieved by 2030 worldwide. While this is 2017, medical experts alongside Nurhi have urged families to plan their homes the same way they plan their parties like weddings to feed all mouths.

“Family planning does not limit you from the number of children you want to have. It helps you prepare for the arrival of each of them; it helps you put good, healthy space between two children so the woman can rest her body and be better prepared to carry another child,”  Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) State Team Leader, Dr. Edun Omasanjuwa had explained.

While several have had misconceptions about FP that it limits them from having more children or wants to reduce the population of a country, Family Planning is said to be a healthy Child Birth Spacing to curb the looming disaster of poverty, low quality education for children.

More so, FP allows couples plan the timing of pregnancy, attain their desired number of children and determine the spacing of the pregnancies. This can be achieved through use of contraceptive methods that couples can choose one that best meet their needs and circumstances.

Family Planning methods are: Hormonal, Barrier, IUD, Sterilisation, Natural and Emergency. This was according to the experts at a two day training for health journalists in Lagos on the theme, ‘tagged ‘Spitfire Advocacy’, these experts highlighted the various benefits of FP for each family.

Edun highlighted the advantages. “It makes the entire family healthy; it boosts the health of the children, it helps parents capable of feeding the children with quality nutrition as desired, it boost the finance of the home and every child gets quality among several others."

Having highlighted the many advantages of FP, the Doctor concludes that if Nigeria adopts FP, it will eradicate poverty; hence, Nigeria will be able to achieve quality education for all as shown in SDG 4.

Meanwhile, Mr. Adewale Haastrup said, annually 23 million is allotted for family planning and not solely for family planning but under the umbrella of reproductive health.

“FP funding in Lagos is not sustainable as most funding for FP programs come from foreign donors. Although, commodities are provided free of charge for FP methods, an additional barrier to accessing services is the cost of consumables at the public and private levels.”

‎According to the Lagos state Team Leader at Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI), since 2013, FP CPR in Lagos has increase to 3.5 percent. According to Monitoring performance accountability, FP uptake in Lagos state has increased by 3.5 percent, representing 51 percent.

Edun, however, expressed sadly: “We are supposed to move by 14 percent per year to be able to achieve the 74 percent, but we are moving per year at the rate of 0.6 percent.

Therefore, to achieve the 74 percent of Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) by 2018, he said the state government needed to increase funding by 25 percent.

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