By Lola Seriki Idahosa
Trace Reporters –To bridge gap, in unmet needs of family planning, there is need for other sources, providing family planning services and Integrate E is gearing up to to bridge the gap.
Ibrahim Ahmad staff of Society of Family Health, working on Integrate E Project expressed this while interacting with Health-4-All Media Initiatives (HAMI) on Friday in Kaduna.
He explained that towards achieving that, they support drugs store to provide contraceptive services.
Ahmad said that Kaduna is an important state in the nation, third most populous and with about two million women of child bearing age.
“Kaduna has highest Contraceptive Prevalence Rate in North West, but still low in meeting target adolescent pregnancy still a challenge. Kaduna also has only 534 facilities providing contraceptive facilities, in spite of its huge population,” he said.
Speaking further, he said that they also open up the space for government and others who are interested.
He lamented that by law, PPP and community pharmacists are not allowed to provide some services like injectables and implanol.
“The other challenge we have is that awareness of family planning is high, but uptake has remained low. There is also high rate of unmet needs, about 14 to 18%.
“Young people who are sexually active also say they don’t have need for family planning but they are getting pregnant and dropping out of school.
“It is a challenge for public health practitioners and media committed to reporting health. If right information is available, people will be more educated and seek for services.
“Another problem is that service providers are not providing youth friendly services. There are also biases in our communities.
“They hold biases in young people assessing family planning. The media can help in addressing such biases,” he added.
The Society for Family Health representative, said that their interventions target at young people in ways that they can address biases in the society and people who have needs can be directed to where they can find them.
“To ensure information is available to communities. Family planning must not be public sector driven. People just feel like health should be free,” he said.
He emphasized that there is need for change of narratives, so that more can believe that preventive health is better than curative health.
“We know one of those preventive that has huge and community benefits is family planning,” he explained.
Ahmad said that their programme does not include limiting children or encouraging abortions, but stressing that young people who are not married should not get pregnant.
“We don’t support abortion,” he stressed.
The Integrate E Project according to him, is working with young women from ages 15 to 24.
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