An expert on Family Planning, Mr. Benjamin Maigari of Family Health Advocacy Nigeria Initiative (FHANI), has said that maternal deaths can be reduced by 30% if Child Spacing methods are embraced by all.
He noted that, in Kaduna State, despite the fact that people are beginning to embrace Child Spacing, the level is still far bellow expectation, adding that more users are still needed to be able to meet the Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR).
Benjamin who said this during a Roundtable Media on child spacing, organized by Africa Media Development Foundation (AMDF), added that availability of consumable is still a major challenge in the state, as women still pay between N100 to N1000 to access the service.
Earlier, Cecilia Marcus of Family Planning Unit, at the State Primary Healthcare Agency, appealed to the media for support in creating demand for services as 534 facilities across the state are currently providing FP services.
According to her, “National Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) is presently at 25 per cent, while that of Kaduna State is 20 per cent but in Kaduna we hope to attain 46 per cent CPR. With you on our side, and support from government, international partners and the communities, we would reach our target,” she said.
She explained that child spacing services are done in three different levels in the state; primary, secondary and tertiary, with additional services provider by trained patent medicine vendors.
“We have other channels that distribute family planning commodities that are known and unknown to us such as patent medicine vendors, some are trained to distribute child spacing.
”We have community based service providers and they issue out none prescriptive child spacing methods but refers those they can’t handle to the nearest health facility, ” she said.
Cecilia said that in the agency’s quest to increase demand, they get support from partners like the Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiatives (NURHI) and UNFPA among several others they embark on outreach mostly in areas that lack health facilities.
