FG identifies killer of reproductive age women

The Federal Government has identified complications during pregnancy and delivery as the major causes of morbidity and mortality among women of reproductive age.

Consequently, it is working relentlessly to ensure availability of functional Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) with skilled birth attendants, essential reproductive and maternal health commodities for the provision of voluntary Family Planning Services (FPS) and quality antenatal, delivery and postnatal care to women and children.

Meanwhile, John Snow Incorporated has advocated utilisation of innovative means to advance primary healthcare and improve maternal and reproductive health indices in the country.

At the launch of five Reproductive Health Documents, yesterday, in Abuja, Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, expressed the government’s commitment to providing Comprehensive and integrated sexual and reproductive health services to all, especially adolescents and women, who constitute a significant percentage of the population.

Ehanire lamented the prevalence of Obstetric Fistula in the country, which he described as “unacceptably high,” adding that giving women access to reproductive and maternal health services “is a priority of the Federal Government.”

He noted that as part of efforts to realise the vision, several initiatives had been launched to scale up quality healthcare and include implementation of Basic Healthcare Provision Fund, Free Contraceptive Commodities Policy and the recently launched emergency ambulance services in the FCT, among others.

“Some progress has been made over the years in the scale-up of the delivery and uptake of family planning services and commodities. However, it is obvious that more work needs to be done to achieve the set targets and ultimate goal towards ensuring that women are supported to make choices in their quest to meet their maternal and family planning needs. Presently, our modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) is at 12 per cent, which is far below our FP 2030 target of 27 per cent,” he said.

In a goodwill message, the In-country Lead, ‘Self Care Accelerator Project, by John Snow Incorporated, Miranda Buba, pledged the organisation’s continuous support to Nigeria in public health interventions.

She explained that Access Collaborative Project, one of the interventions in the reproductive health space, focused on the introduction and scale-up of the novel game-changing contraceptive, DMPA-SC, in 12 countries, including Nigeria, is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, while implementing partners are PATH with JSI Research and Training institute as a sub-grantee.