By Hassan Zaggi
The Director of Family Health at the Federal Ministry of Health, Dr. Salma Kolo, has said that for sustainable development to be achieved, Nigerians must adopt fertility management and child spacing.
She gave the advice at a three-day online training for the media organised by Rotary Action Group for Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health.
She, therefore, advised Nigerians to give birth to the number of children they can comfortably cater for to enable both the parents and the children live quality lives.
“It is not about having children over and over again, but having the number of children you can provide quality life for so that they can contribute to nation building.
“We cannot make a meaningful sustainable development without having a level of management of our fertility and also child spacing.
“We need to space the number of children we want to have so that each child will have quality life so that the mother will be healthy and continue to be productive both within and outside the family,” she insisted.
The Director, however, lamented that “Child birth rate in Nigeria which is about 5.1 is too high. But we all know that this varies among states. If you go to some states the number of children per woman is about 7. Something has to be done.”
On the efforts by the federal government to ensure family planning commodities are available to all those who need them across the country, Dr. Anas Kolo said: “In line with our commitment to the provision, improvement and uptake of family planning commodities, Nigeria has committed to the global commitment of the FP 2020 since 2011 and now we have renew that commitment, the globe is currently working towards realizing FP 2030 commitment. Nigeria has made commitment to that.
“Another area we are looking for in terms of partnership is to get the private sector to be involved. The government cannot do it alone.
“Evidence has shown it in Nigeria that more than 60 per cent of the populace pay out of pocket expenses to purchase health. How many Nigerians can afford this? More than 70 per cent of Nigerians live below the poverty line. Government has made its own effort of 1 per cent consolidated revenue fund.”
While lamenting the huge disruption caused by COVID-19 pandemic on access to family planning commodities and services, she said: “Within the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had a lot of confusion, distraction, burden and anxiety in the health sector in Nigeria. That greatly affected the delivery of essential health services. Mothers and children were the worst affected. Not directly by the COVID infection, but they were affected indirectly by the impact of COVID.
“If you remember, a lot of health workers were diverted and moved to work on COVID at the COVID centres, essential drugs including family planning could not be delivered.
“So, we realized that there was disruption in family planning, scarce resources were also diverted by COVID. All that affected the delivery of essential services, especially to maternal, new born and child health, adolescents, the elderly and also the nutrition services in the country, hence, Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent and Elderly Health Plus Nutrition (RMNCAEH+N) was launched. “
Speaking earlier, the National Coordinator, Rotary Action Group for Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health, Prof. Emmanuel Adedolapo Lufadeju, said that the training was organised to resolve the challenge of public awareness about how family planning commodities and services can be accessed by those who need them.
“They do not know what to do when they want to delay birth. So this particular session is creating access and community participation of women and adolescent.
“Access to contraceptives, access to counselling and access to be able to make inform choices on the best method to use.”
