In its bid to ensure that individuals, families and communities are responsive to their health, implementing partners in health sector have called on Cross River government to leverage on the Delivering Innovation in Self Care (DISC) project to support women to take greater control over their own sexual and reproductive health needs.
Nigerian Tribune gathered that DISC project was launched in January 2020 in Nigeria and it is funded by Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) and implemented by Society for Family Health (SFH) and Federal Ministry of Health, it aims to demonstrate that self-care beginning with contraceptive self-injection is a viable cornerstone of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research(SRH).
Speaking in Calabar, Tuesday, during the DISC data capacity strengthening support and training, Femi Tonye, Statistician with Federal Ministry of Health noted that there’s need for states to adopt the project to their health care system so that it can become part of health care activities in states.
According to him, “We are here to discuss sustainability plan for this project. The SFH is about to round up this project so they want commitment from the state so that states can adopt it to their system and it becomes part of the activity in states health care.
“A lot has been done by development partners in the country, most times we discover that some projects are wonderful ones which have impacted lives of many people but after the funding or after the partners have carried out the activity you find out that from the government end, there’s no continuation. You also find out that when the funders leave, that ends the project so I’ll encourage government to buy into this particular project.
He added, “From our data, you’ll discover that the uptake was low at the baseline but as intervention continues the data is increasing and it is encouraging. So if Cross River State can buy into it and own it and develop a sustainability plan for it, it will be good and it will speak well of the state in terms of health system strengthening.
Also speaking, the project business manager, research and data analyst, DISC project, SFH, Fidelis Edet stated that the primary objective of the project is to scale up quality self-care options, starting with DMPA-SC (Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate – Subcutaneous).
“We have been carrying out activities like this around states, meeting like this, allows us to ask ourselves if we are making progress. This meeting allows us to evaluate the challenges that we faced in the field and the way forward, he stressed.
Speaking earlier in a goodwill message, Director of Public Health, State Ministry of Health, Dr Bassey Off or, expressed optimism that soon, Cross River State will be leading in health deliverables.
“As a state, we try as much as possible to create an enabling environment for these implementing partners to function. We also support them to carry out capacity building of our workers, so that they will have knowledge to pass the information to the end users.
All these are aimed at letting the end user know how to self-inject these drugs, he maintained.
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