Child Spacing: Stakeholders in Kaduna Want Special Fund for Staff Training, Others

By Alex Uangbaoje, Kaduna

Kaduna Stakeholders on Child Spacing has called on the state government to set up special fund for to address five thematic areas identified in the Costed Implementation Plan (CIP), such as staff and training, demand generation and behavioral change communication, forecasting and distribution logistics, policy and financing as well as supervision, monitoring and coordination.

According to them, there will be need for the government to create a recurrent budget line in advancing issues affecting Child Spacing programme in the state.

The stakeholders came up was this resolution at the weekend at meeting to generate child spacing advocacy issues in 2019 budget proposal as a deliberate attempt to address some lapses that were identified in previous budget years.

The meeting, was organised by Family Health Advocacy in Nigeria Initiative (FHANI), supported by Pathfinder International and has representatives of Kaduna State Drugs Management Agency (DMA), State Primary Health Care Development Agency (SPHCDA), Ministry of Health and Human Services (MoHHS), Planning and Budget Commission (P&BC) and Child Spacing Media Forum (CSMF) in attendance.

The participants, while acknowledging the efforts of the State government towards, especially the prompt release of N75 million allocated to the programme for 2018, they want the government to equally hasting the release of cash backing for the 2017 budget which is still pending.
The applauded the commitment of Development Partners who have assured the state government of their support in the distribution of recently procured child spacing consumables.

In his opening remarks, Acting Chairman, FHANI, Alhaji Bala Muhammed Tijjani explained the meeting which was meant to discuss issues surrounding budget planning and implementation for Child Spacing programme, became necessary because of some disturbing data coming from the government concerning the health of women as regard pregnancy in the state.

On his part, a member of FHANI, Suleiman Tanko, said FHANI is much concerned about child spacing in Kaduna State, because of the high mother and child mortality rate in the country, with significance of the data in the Northeast and Northwest and Kaduna in particular, to see how they could join hand with other partners to reduce the maternal and child mortality rate drastically in the state.

He added that, some of the factors responsible for deaths around pregnancy include child marriage, or when a woman do not have enough rest in-between pregnancies or when the woman’s body is weak due to advanced age.

According to him, “All these things are coming up because some people lack information about them to dispel the myths they have hard.

“This is why FHANI is taking interest in this course because it will reduce mother and child mortality. We are advocating for government who will provide the commodities and consumables and service providers.

“And to get that done, there is need for fund and this fund can only be provided for in the budget – creating enough budget line for the task in the budget document is our top concern”

CIP is a strategic multi-year planning document that details activities and cost for achieving set goals, increase access to voluntary child spacing to all women/families.

The CIP for Kaduna state was developed for three years – 2016, 2017 and 2018 targeting Contraceptives Prevalence Rate (CPR) of 46.5 percent as well as addressing unmet need pinned at 22 percent (Source: Kaduna State CIP 2016-2018).

Newsweb

At Newsweb Express we don't only break the news, we are committed to investigative and developmental journalism

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *