Family planning: Stakeholders urge husbands to support their wives

Citing the enormous benefits of family planning to women’s health and survival during pregnancy and childbirth, stakeholders in maternal and child health, have called on husbands to give their wives the most needed support in the use of family planning.

They also want government to expand women’s access to family planning commodities through adequate funding and to ensure that family planning contraceptives and other services were available free of charge in public health facilities.

The importance of family planning based on available evidence, they said, cannot be over-emphasised, stressing that family planning strengthens the health of the woman directly and the man indirectly.

The stakeholders revealed that family planning saves the lives of mothers and can help reduce maternal mortality by 40 percent, affirming that family planning/childbirth spacing methods allow women to rest between pregnancies in order to regain their health.

Currently, Nigeria contributes 10 percent of global maternal deaths; a situation the stakeholders said could be effectively addressed through increased investment in family planning and the health of women in general.

The stakeholders spoke at a Spitfire Advocacy Training for journalists on Family Planning, organised in Lagos recently by the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) in partnership with Devcoms to boost awareness on family planning in the media.

In his presentation, one of the speakers and Lagos State Team Leader for NURHI, Dr. Omasanjuwa Edun said family planning is one aspect of healthcare that has impact in all humans. He further said family planning reduces poverty as it helps couples to give birth to only the number of children they can cater for.

To women, family planning provides the opportunity to become healthier in carrying a pregnancy and to make money for themselves. It gives the man peace of mind. The man whose wife uses contraceptive is a successful man because he has less children to cater for and does not spend the whole of his life struggling to provide for the needs of his children, he said.
However, most countries of the world, particularly in developing nations like Nigeria, still have male-dominated cultures where husband’s approval may often be a precondition for a woman to use family planning.

Throwing more light into benefits of family planning, Edun noted that “There are so many things that cause maternal deaths and we have found out that some of these deaths happened in women who were not ready to carry a pregnancy.

We realised that if those women who were not in a good health condition had delayed the pregnancy and allow their body to be ready, that would have reduced a lot of complications and they would have survived. If they had used family planning to delay their pregnancy, 40 per cent of them would have been alive today.

He therefore, urged government to take responsibility and ownership of funding for family planning commodities in order to increase up take while appealing that barriers in accessing family planning commodities such as lack of providers, facilities, commodities, delay in decision making and fear of side effects on the part of the women themselves should be addressed.

Corroborating the views of his colleague, Kaduna state team leader for NURHI, Kabir Abdullahi, said family planning could significantly address the poor state of maternal health in the country.

90 Nigerian women, according to him, are dying daily from pregnancy complications, translating into four women dying per hour. I in 13 women is at risk of maternal deaths in Nigeria against 1 in 26 for Sub-Saharan Africa. In countries like Sweden, maternal death there is just one in 7000 women. This is a reflection of the society’s priority to the lives of women”, he said.

Lamenting the poor attitude of women to family planning in the country, Abdullahi, said contraceptive utilisation in Nigeria is about 15 percent while the use of modern contraceptive is 10 per cent, translating to 1 in 10 women using contraceptive.

For Nigeria to achieve the 36 per cent set target of Contraceptive Prevalence Rate(CPR) by 2018,he counselled: “There is need to ensure availability of the commodities free of charge. Even a small cost can deny a woman from accessing these commodities. Myths and misconception must be addressed through proper counselling of the side effects associated with each method before making choice.

We need to expand access and make the services available to women. Husbands need to support their wives in accessing the services because it is a life saving commodity and governments should have budget lines for family planning/childbirth spacing. Now, media stations should promote benefits of contraceptive utilisation and reduce incidences of deaths from too frequent birth.

Available modern family planning/childbirth spacing methods in Nigeria:
* Pill (including the mini pills for nursing mothers)
* Injectible (taken every 2 or 3 months depending on the type selected)
* Implant
* Intra-Uterine Device(IUD)
* Male condom
* Female condom
* Exclusive breastfeeding method
* Tubal Ligation(BTL-permanent methods for women)
* Vasectomy (Permanent method for men).