A nongovernmental organisation, NGO, Akena+Health in collaboration with Society for Family Health (SFH) and Association of Reproductive Family Health( ARFH) has called on Nigerian women and girls to adopt different contraception methods, especially, Depot-Medroxyprogesterone Acetate-SubCutaneous, DMPA-SC method, to reduce mortality, ensure convenient child spacing and unwanted pregnancies.
Akena+Health, which made the appeal during the implementation of research dissemination meeting for the research programme, Innovation for Choice and Autonomy, ICAN, held in Enugu with women and service providers, said they had trained women and health workers on the needs and benefits of safe family planning methods.
Addressing the participants at the meeting held at Bayview Hotel and Suite, Enugu Friday, the ICAN Programme Manager, Mrs. Chioma Okoli, said through the research they followed women for the past four years in the three states of Nigeria – Lagos, Enugu and Plateau – “in our journey towards obtaining and using different methods of contraception.”
Speaking specifically about the DMPA-SC method of contraception, which is self-injecting, Okoli said they reached between 800 to 1000 women and talked with providers, and users in both public and private health facilities, pointing out that in Enugu State, they reached over 500 women and providers.
The Executive Secretary, Enugu State Primary Health Care Centre, Dr. Ifeyinwa Ani-Osheku, represented by the state Coordinator, Family Planning, Mrs Maureen Nwankwo, commended Akena+ Health who used their ICAN research to reach both providers and women in the state on the importance of safe family planning methods such as the DMPA-SC.
The Family Planning coordinator for Ezeagu local government area of Enugu state, one of the two local governments chosen for the ICAN research, Mrs. Celina Idoko, said Ezeagu women had been sensitised on the importance of family planning methods especially that of DMPA-SC.
“Ezeagu women have known that through family planning, they space their children and “give birth by choice and not by chance.”
Idoko said gone were the days when women gave birth like rats, as many as 10 children without considering their upbringing.
“They have known the importance of spacing their children so that they can give birth to the children they can cater for, not giving birth to 10 and 12 children.”
The dissemination meeting was attended by the stakeholders from the Ministry of Health, Pharmaceutical Society among others.