Project ends with lesson to improve family planning

Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, NURHI, funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, pioneered its “72-hour-makeover” at Lugbe in the FCT where it renovated an entire primary health centre between close of work on a Friday evening and Monday morning.NURHI, which targeted families in urban slum neighbourhoods around Abuja and in other key states, completed […]

Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, NURHI, funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, pioneered its “72-hour-makeover” at Lugbe in the FCT where it renovated an entire primary health centre between close of work on a Friday evening and Monday morning.
NURHI, which targeted families in urban slum neighbourhoods around Abuja and in other key states, completed hospital refurbishment before providing commodities for a “designated” family planning section at the clinic.
“It is important that the FCTA [Federal Capital Territory Administration] picks it up,” said Adebusola Salako, who led NURHI team in the FCT.
“The women and children are more confident in coming [to the clinic]. There is a place designated for family planning, and it is easier to come in.”
NURHI helped push up the number of women opting to plan their families or space their children, including the number of women using any modern method of contraception for the first time ever.
The five-year project, which officially closes this month, “has been able to change attitudes to family planning,” said Moji Odeku, Director of NURHI.
She said communication between partners or spouses about family planning was more open, instead of partners expecting women should always be the ones to initiate discussion about it.
Odeku noted religious organisations were “coming out publicly to speak about the benefits of family planning and policymakers were starting to see it as a developmental tool.”
The FCT’s Primary Health Care Board has welcomed groups willing to work on behaviour patterns of the public in hopes of changing negative attitudes toward planning.

Said Dr Matthew Ashikeni, acting executive secretary of the board: “The strongest weapon we have is to ensure people are aware of the benefits of planning their families—the number you want to have, the time you want to have it—and begin to look at the family as a unit, so that the services are provided and other requirements for the family are met.”