Abia Commissioner Advocates Family Planning for Reduced Maternal Mortality
Abia State commissioner for Health, Joe Osuji, has stressed the need to entrench the practice of family planning in Nigeria, describing it as effective means of preventing maternal mortality and ensuring quality healthcare in families.
Osuji made the call in Umuahia during a family planning workshop organised by Marie Stopes Nigeria, which is aimed at promoting the use of DMPA-SC self-injection method of family planning.
The workshop themed ‘Abia State DMPA (Sayana Press) dissemination meeting,’ had in attendance, relevant agencies in health sector in Abia State and from the 17 local government areas of the state.
The health Commissioner, who described Marie Stopes Nigeria as a key partner to Abia State government in promotion of quality health policies, drummed support for the DMPC-SC self-injecting family planning method among women but advised married women against hiding the scheme and its methods from their husbands.
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Chinagozi Adindu, the executive secretary of Abia State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, representatives of society for family health and World Health Organisation (WHO) in their different speeches during the event urged Abia women to key into the Sayana Press injection initiative as it has been recording commendable success among the users in various parts of the country where it had been introduced.
Earlier in her keynote presentation, the clinical training officer of Marie Stopes in Abia State, Faith Anikwe listed the benefits of the use of self-injection formula of family planning.
According to her, the campaigns against maternal mortality had received a great boost from Marie Stopes Nigeria in most parts of Nigeria in the last few years of the group’s health activities in Nigeria, adding that 600 trainers had been trained across the nation to train others in the use of the family planning method.
Anikwe pointed out that 50 persons, comprising nurses and midwives who had been trained in Abia State by Marie Stopes Nigeria had equally trained many women in urban and rural areas on the benefits of DMPA-SC Sayana self-injection, noting that the trainees have started applying it without side effects.
