Akwa Ibom State family planning coordinator of the Healthcare Development Agency, Mrs. Enobong Eshiet, has said that if efforts used in sensitising the public, especially the urban poor and those at the hinterlands on the spread of COVID-19 and HPV vaccine is deployed, sustainable development goals for reproductive and maternal health would have been achieved.
Mrs Eshiet made the assertion at a three-day training organised by Development Communities” (DevComs) in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, for media personnel, social media influencers and MDA officials on media advocacy for family planning.
She said poor awareness of family planning at the media space is the major factor for its low uptake in the communities.
The coordinator said that such will reduce the issues of unwanted pregnancies, maternal, mortality, among other issues associated with nonaccess to family planning.
DecComs, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), worried by the poor knowledge of family planning, especially at the grassroots, also called on journalists to intensify efforts in creating awareness on the benefits of accessing family planning by women of reproductive ages.
The alarming rate of ignorance among the urban poor and grassroots populace was alluded to by a young couple of 34 and 37 years of age respectively, who said they had produced six children, within nine years of their marriage.
Speaking to the Nigerian Tribune at the Primary Health Centre, Oti Oro in Okobo Local Government Area of the state, the wife, Blessing Ima Bassey, said she never heard of family planning until she brought her sixth child for immunisation at the health centre recently.
Nigerian Tribune observed that most of those who came to the health centre for immunisation know little or nothing about family planning.
Another lady who gave her name as Ekemini Okpo with a two-month-old baby said she had given birth to nine children, adding that the only four surviving ones are not healthy.
Eshiet urged media practitioners to press on government and other policy makers to provide consumables to primary health facilities and employ more manpower as well as giving a budgetary line to family planning to enhance its smooth services.
She also lauded the donor agency, ‘The Challenge Initiative (TCI)’ for its steadfastness in providing consumables to Oti-Oro health centre and other facilities and urged the state government to key into it.
“The media can talk to government to provide consumables. There are lots of unmet needs and we want the media to channel the same energy they used in sensitising the people on COVID-19 and HPV vaccines to family planning so that people will get to know the reason they should get family planning and for a woman to know the number of children she will want to have.
“Government should invest in family planning. They should give family planning a budget line because when the Federal Ministry of Health came to disseminate the national guidelines on state procurement of family commodities it said one percent of the health budget should be set aside for family planning to help the facilities to procure family planning commodities to prevent stock out where a client will be compelled to make do what they see and not what they want,” Mrs Eshiet said.
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