Media Action for Family Planning, an advocacy group comprising media practitioners and health workers in Anambra state, Wednesday, took sensitisation campaign on family planning to Aguata Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC), Ekwulobia.
The exercise, Orient Daily reports, was to improve access to family planning services among women of reproductive age in the state. The programme was supported by The Change Initiative.
While receiving the group, the Family Planning Service Provider and Reproductive Health Supervisor of Aguata local government area, Mrs. Ijeoma Onuorah, described family planning as a valuable and important component of every PHC and noted that, through it, many women had prevented unwanted pregnancy when relating with their husbands.
She disclosed that in the last two months, the PHC had counselled over 340 males and females on family planning, and noted that about half of them had accessed different family planning methods.
According to her, family planning, which comes in different methods, is also good for single women of active sexual life. Some of these methods are injectable, some are insertable into a woman, while others are in form of an oral peel.
“Every woman within the reproductive bracket can choose whichever method she likes; and can protect them from 2-months to 10 years depending on the method adopted”, she said.
Onuorah called for more sensitisation across the nooks and crannies of communities in the state, to raise wider knowledge and acceptability of family planning, while canvassing more support in provision of family planning services.
She said, “We provide family planning services in this PHC, but more awareness is needed to encourage more women to access family planning. There is a need for more community mobilizers and volunteers, especially women, who will help to take the message to their fellow women.
“We need to have more radio jingles and programmes on family planning, and other mainstream and new media should help to propagate the message to our women; let there be leaflets, banners, billboards, and so on, giving people information on family planning at PHCs”.
Onuorah stressed the need to dispel myths surrounding family planning which, according to her, were as a result of lack of correct information. She said the side effects accruing from family planning were method-specific and assured that there were remedies to any side effect such as menstrual changes that one might experience.
She said that the centre charged the government-approved N500 for some family planning methods. According to her, the money was meant for purchase of consumables such as hand gloves, detergents, plasters, cotton wools and so on.
She urged the state government to allow PHCs to increase the amount to be able to sustain the initiative. “The state government can also help us provide these consumables so we don’t charge the patients at all”, she appealed.
On the challenges facing the facility, Onuorah decried, “The structure here is old, and some of the roofs are leaking water; currently, the toilet for our patients is in bad condition; there is no water supply too because we buy all the water we use. We are equally short-staffed, as I am the only health staff here, others are local government casual workers, volunteers and students on industrial training”.
In an interview with this paper, Mrs. Anulika Ugwu, who had accessed family planning service, said it was good because it helped many women prevent unwanted pregnancy, while encouraging other women to key into the initiative.
Also, Mrs. Chinwendu Ekezie, a mother of six, said she was happy that her husband supported her to embark on a family planning to avoid giving birth to another child. She said the times were hard, emphasising that family planning would help to give birth to only the number of children one could train.
Earlier, the media focal person for the programme, Mrs. Franca Madike, had, in a vote of thanks, encouraged women to access family planning to reduce the number of women that die from unwanted pregnancy and child-birth related complications. She lauded the Aguata PHC leadership for its effort to galvanise women to access family planning.
