Stakeholders lament unredeemed million-dollars pledges on women”s health

Health experts have expressed concern about millions of dollars in unredeemed pledges Nigeria has made to improve access to family planning commodities and inadequate budgetary allocation to family planning. In 2012, Nigeria pledged $45 million, up from $12 million, in four years to improve access and distribution and remove barriers to family planning. But an […]

Health experts have expressed concern about millions of dollars in unredeemed pledges Nigeria has made to improve access to family planning commodities and inadequate budgetary allocation to family planning.

In 2012, Nigeria pledged $45 million, up from $12 million, in four years to improve access and distribution and remove barriers to family planning.

But an extra $8.35 million pledge for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health at the 2012 summit is “still pending, four years after,” according to Chinwe Onumonu, project director for Association for the Advancement of Family Planning (AAFP).

Speaking at a media round table for health journalists, Onumonu said the key to increasing access to family planning lay in the National Family Planning Strategy which has been drawn up and costed but with no budget to back its implementation.

She added that budgetary allocation for the family health departments, which handles family planning, is restrictive or nonexistent.

Family planning commodities are still paid for by international funding partners, and where they are available in states, they don’t get to local government areas and down to health facilities where they are needed.

“Many states have not provided money for the last-mile distribution or the consumables to go with them—cotton wool, spirit and such. What beats me is: the ones they use in theatres, where do they get them?”

Nigeria set a target to achieve a contraceptive prevalence rate of 38% by 2018, but at least 16 out of every 100 women who needed family planning services can’t get it, according to national demographic health survey.

Explain the low patronage, Onumonu said, “Initially, we thought it was religion, but we found the money needed to push it is not there.”

AAFP believes up to 33% of an estimated 576 women who die for every 100,000 live births from complications of pregnancy and childbirth could be prevented by increasing access to and take-up of family planning.

The 33% is a combination of deaths from haemorrhoids and 11 out of 100 women deaths attribution to unsafe abortion.

Onumonu suggested women would not go through unsafe abortion if they could prevent pregnancy.