Young ladies should go for family planning if – Hafsat Baba .As FHANI presents Kaduna FP budget performance scorecard Jan-August 2018
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NIGERIA –
In order to reduce the spate of unsafe abortions, maternal and newborn deaths in Kaduna State, Commissioner, Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Hafsat Mohammed Baba has called on young ladies to embrace family planning services if they they cannot abstain from sex until marriage.
The Commissioner, who stated this in her capacity as Chairperson during Family Health Advocates in Nigeria Initiative (FHANI) Kaduna State family planning stakeholders meeting held in Kaduna on Tuesday, September, 25, 2018 added that, every reproductive age woman marry or not marry should go for child spacing services either to prevent unplanned pregnancy or give space between pregnancies.
She said, “we normally tell young ladies to go for family planning if they cannot hold on sex until marriage instead of abortion or killing the child as a result of unplanned pregnancy.
“We are trying to manage what we have in Kaduna. Its happening all over because the population is increasing and so the demand for family planning services.
“Whatever we come up with at this experience sharing meeting will be taken to the appropriate quarters for action.
“However, as we look forward to 2019 and what we can do better, organisations working around family planning and child spacing especially, Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) need to to work on attitude of service providers because they send many women away.
“There was a case with a private hospital where a lady who supposed to be health worker, giving drip and all that was doing that even when she could hardly read or write anything. That showed she did not have what it takes. We have to ensure that well trained health workers are employed.
“On our part, the issues of health is in the front burner of the administration of Governor Nasir El-Rufai and we are already mapping out the private hospitals across the state to address some of these issues. We are aware of rising health schools in the state. We will certainly separate grains from chaff at appropriate time.”
Presenting the scorecard on behalf of FHANI, Iliya Kure said, the State’s FP budget performance scorecard was developed using analysis of budget documents, policy documents and reports relating to FP in the state.
Iliya Kure reminded the attendees that, though a lot still needed to be done with regard to FP financing, a budget line for FP was created in 2017 to address the issue of out-of-pocket expenses for consumables (like hand gloves, methylated spirit, cotton wool, syringes etc) by women accessing the services noting that, FP commodities are currently provided by the federal government and development partners.