The Bauchi State Government and partners in the health sector, following the sudden exit of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have commenced seeking alternative sources of funds for childbirth spacing programmes.

Speaking on Wednesday, the Executive Chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Board, Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed, said that despite the rejection of family planning contraception, many people, including religious leaders, now encourage their followers to space their children, hence increasing demand for the service.

Mohammed, during a stakeholders’ engagement meeting jointly held with The Challenge Initiative (TCI), urged governments at all levels to brace up and source alternative funding models for the various interventions.

He said that the Board would reach out to corporate organisations to channel their corporate social responsibilities towards family planning projects and other primary care services.

According to him, the withdrawal of USAID interventions has grounded most activities in the health sector, particularly in family planning (FP), leading to a shortage of commodities and consumables across the state.

“It is time to wake up, own all the interventions, and seek ways to generate funding in order to sustain them for the benefit of our people. These donors and international development partners are not going to be here forever. We need to create local solutions to the problem immediately,” he said.

Also, the Director of Medical Services in the Ministry of Health, Dr Suleiman Auwal Abubakar, emphasised the need to ensure that the gains made in family planning were sustained by ensuring that commodities and consumables were made available.

He added that all relevant stakeholders must mobilise resources to ensure commodities and consumables are available, now that women of childbearing age and their husbands have embraced the system.

Members of the Journalists for Public Health and Development Initiative (J4PD) were charged with coming up with a sustainable advocacy proposal that would galvanise the situation.

The Executive Director of J4PD, Elizabeth Kah, expressed the group’s readiness while charging the government to intensify the availability of commodities and consumables to boost family planning services.

Also speaking, the TCI Lead expressed the organisation’s determination to provide technical support for the implementation of the FP programme, even though it has closed out its intervention in the state.