The Federal Government has reaffirmed its commitment to achieving zero maternal mortality in Nigeria. This, it said would be achieved by providing access to affordable family planning services the people.
This was contained in a statement by the Director of the Reproductive Health Division, Family Health Department, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Dr Samuel Oyeniyi.
Oyeniyi disclosed this while speaking at the End of Project Dissemination Meeting for the Catalytic Opportunity Funds (COF) Hormonal Intra-Uterine Devices (IUD) Scale-Up Project, on Tuesday in Abuja.
COF is a flexible funding pool managed by the Hormonal IUD Access Group. And it is aimed at driving the scale-up of hormonal IUDs in targeted countries.
The project was implemented in Delta and Kano states in 2024.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2017 placed Nigeria’s maternal mortality rate at 917 deaths per 100,000 live births. A rate that rose from nearly 14 per cent in 2020 to 1,047 deaths.
According to Oyeniyi, achieving zero maternal mortality is possible. He pointed out that this will be through targeted approaches in implementing family planning (FP) programmes.
He said, “We just need to put in more effort, be more strategic, and we need to be intervention driven. Yes, we can.
“For FP, we can continue to do the things that we were doing before. But we need to bring some other things into the system.
“We need to be doing more high-impact practices. And we will be doing more integration in our implementation for us to be able to have a good impact on FP”.
Oyeniyi also noted that plans were in place to prioritize postpartum and post-abortion FP, particularly for addressing high-risk pregnancies.
He, therefore, emphasized the importance of integrating new innovations to scale up FP programmes and achieve better results.
Oyeniyi noted the need to ensure access to FP services for rural communities. Including better information, counselling, and commodities.
The DG, therefore, called on all stakeholders to adopt all available strategies to maximize the impact of FP programmes in reducing maternal mortality rates.
The Reproductive Health and FP Coordinator at the Kano State Ministry of Health, Dr. Umu Isa, appreciated the impact of the progamme in the State.
Isa stressed the impact of the programme in training 110 service providers across 10 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the State. He pointed that the programme is expected to improve FP indices in the State.
According to him, the training covered all FP methods, not just hormonal IUDs. And the State met its objectives for the programme.
He pointed out that lessons learnt will be applied to other Council Areas that were not part of the initial project.
The key activities of the programme included capacity building, demand generation, and data strengthening to enhance hormonal IUD utilization.
source: NAN
Follow us for more news on our WhatsApp News Channels @
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaC505jB4hdZ5Yx9g82U