*Says shortage of commodities hindering many women willing to space children
By; JACOB ONJEWU DICKSON
To reduce the impact of present hardship being experienced due to economic misfortunes of the country, women have been advised to take advantage of child spacing to ensure a better and healthier future.
The Social Behavioural Change and Communication (SBCC) Officer, DISC Project ,Society for Family Health (SFH), Pharm. Terlumun Usha gave the advise, when speaking on the sidelines of a sensitization programme in commemoration of the 2024 International Women’s Day (IWD) in Kaduna on Saturday.
He said that the theme for this year’s IWD “Investing in women: Accelerate Progress” is apt because women are the multipliers.
“If women are not empowered society will not gain much. Hence, they need to be sensitized to get the knowledge that if they space their children, they will do better because they will be healthier to be invested in,” he said.
According to him, “We had sensitization Sexual and Reproductive Health with emphasis importance of child spacing. If they know that they can plan their families and space their children, life would be easier for them.
“They were interested and eager to take up child spacing because a woman recovers and she can be healthier and do something meaningful The women were eager to hear the message and we’re excited. Especially when it comes to contraceptive self injection.”
Speaking further, traditional leader of Unguwan Barde Community in Barnawa Kaduna South LGA (Mai Unguwa), Alhaji Musa Saidu Barde told the women that the NGO came with government stakeholders to encourage them to listen to the message, telling them to embrace it, in view of the benefits.
“He encouraged them to come out in large numbers to listen to the message, his message was heeded as you can see, they came here in droves,” he added.
On the present situation of family planning in Kaduna State, he described it as encouraging as the State Government is doing alot in Primary Healthcare especially.
” So far so good, there is a budget line for purchase of family planning commodities and we hope that this cash will be released soonest”
“Right now, the state is short of commodities to make up for the increasing number of women willing to adopt family planning as supplies from FMOH have dropped over the course of the year hence the need for the State to look inwards to meet with increasing demand”
Earlier in an interview with newsmen, Reproductive Health (RH) Coordinator Kaduna South Local Government Area, Hassana Mohammed Kudan, said that the sensitization meeting discussed benefits of child spacing to mother’s, child and the spouse.
“We talked about various family planning methods including contraceptive Self Injection. We laid emphasis on clients to self inject themselves when they decide on DMPA-SC and we had many clients here that accessed the the available FP services. They asked critical questions. They were also sensitised on personal hygiene, environmental hygiene and immunisation as well.
“We have a provider here, providing the services, clients enter, access the services and we had reasonable turn out.
“We lay emphasis on them to visit the nearest LG PHC to access other services especially those that were invasive and required more privacy at the facility in Barnawa” she said.
According to her, the one day event which was sponsored by SFH rendered free services to the women, who were also given refreshments.
“We sent prior notice to them, we have community mobilisers that reached out to them because they cannot come out here without the permission of their spouses, so it was a huge success because almost half of the clients have accessed the services,” she said.
She advised women that the other methods of contraceptives apart from the contraceptive Self injection can be accessed at the PHC.
“My message to women within reproductive age should come and access service, bearing in mind the present economic realities,” she added.
She commended the Kaduna State Government for availability of commodities, but appealed for provision of consumables.
The sensitization was organised as part of activities to mark the International Women’s Day (IWD) by the Society For Family Health (SFH).
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