The annual global campaign centers around a vision where every pregnancy is wanted as World Contraception Day (WCD) was marked on September 26th. The mission is to improve awareness of contraception and enable women to make informed decisions on their sexual and reproductive rights – in essence plan the timing and spacing of their births.
Experts around the world have made various submissions about the fact that women and men, irrespective of their ages, social status, and locations, deserve the highest level of recognition, rights, dignity, respect, assistance and support to achieve their health and survival which translates invariably into the much desired health and development of the family, the society and the nation.
It is however regrettable that for many women, especially in developing countries including Nigeria, the opposite is their reality. Mrs Charity Ibeawuchi, Senior Technical Advisor, Advocacy for Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) noted that the health of the women, particularly those of reproductive age (15 – 49 years) in Nigeria stands out with the silent epidemic of poor maternal mortality and morbidity. “Twenty three percent of our teenage girls (age 15-19) are already mothers or pregnant with their first child. Half of our teenage girl population are already married by age 18, while 61% are married by age 20 (National Demographic and Health Survey Report 2013). Women in Nigeria have an average of 6 children”. She noted.
According to 2013 National Demographic and Health Survey, only few Nigerian women (about 15%) are using any method of family planning for spacing or limiting pregnancies while 10% use modern family planning methods. The low uptake of Family Planning/Child birth spacing methods is one of the reasons why Nigeria still reports high maternal mortality of 576 deaths per 100,000 live births (2013 NDHS Report) in Nigeria. Studies have found that Family planning alone reduces maternal deaths by more than 33%.
Speaking on the low uptake of Family Planning methods in Nigeria, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Prof Oladosu Ojengbede acknowledged that the wide knowledge of Family Planning methods has not translated to its uptake. “Religious connotation seems to draw us back and cultural issues such as the men not supporting family planning, community misconceptions about family planning, religious undertone to family planning and also the failure to build enough confidence in the people to access quality services needed for family planning”.
Charity also noted that the enormity of the current high maternal mortality and morbidity in Nigeria is staggering. The social and economic costs due to the complications and deaths to the family and the nation are enormous and should be resolved as a national priority. Recognizing the efforts of Nigerian government such as the adoption of National Family Planning Blueprint (Costed Implementation Plan) in October 2014 which is aimed at scaling up modern family planning services uptake and enhancing positive behaviours among women and families, she observed that budget lines and funding dedicated to maternal health, including family planning information and services at the federal, state and local governments levels are grossly inadequate to achieve this goal.
In order to tackle the challenges of uptake of Family Planning Mrs Charity Ibeawuchi recommends “political commitment backed by adequate and sustained funding of family planning programmes by the government at all levels will create the necessary enabling environment that will result in decreasing maternal deaths and morbidity thereby increasing maternal survival, increased productivity and poverty reduction”. “Family planning plays a major role in improving maternal, newborn and child health. Family planning helps to avoid the proven challenges that women face in pregnancy/ child birth when they are too young and too old in age and/or when pregnancies are too close and too many. Successful family planning programmes improve quality of life whilst significantly contributing to demographic dividends and national development”, she adds.
In addition, Prof. Ojengbede recommends working with traditional-religious structures in which the people have confidence, trust and will believe and obey. This he said would help dispel the myths, misconceptions, traditional and religious biases that people have against the use of contraceptives. “If we harness their potential, the traditional rulers have a role to play, and we should not think that these traditional and cultural structures will not support family planning. We’ve seen eminent, traditional rulers who are talking about family planning. We need to bring them in far more than we have done”.
