By Luminous Jannamike

ABUJA – The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, has said Nigeria is yet to harness the benefits of family planning despite the recent scale-up of interventions.

He attributed this situation to poor access to, and uptake of family planning services and commodities among citizens.

Speaking during the official launch of three reproductive health documents/tools in Abuja on Tuesday, Adewole said: “Though, delivery and uptake of family planning services and commodities, I must caution that more work must be done to achieve our objective of ensuring that women are supported to make choices in their quest to meet their family planning needs.

“Currently, our modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rate is 16.0% which is low. Furthermore, unmet needs for family planning is high, it is estimated that 12.7% of women who wish to delay or prevent a pregnancy are not using any form of family planning method. These are clear indications that the country is yet to fully harness the benefits of family planning, despite the scale-up in interventions.”

The Minister further said that as part of efforts to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality, the government was promoting a number of initiatives such as training of health workers on life saving skills and family planning technology; scaling-up of Antenatal and Postnatal visits, and skilled birth sttendance; and promotion of Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) services.

“We have also developed, disseminated and are implementing approved documents and tools on Family Planning/Reproductive Health programming. These tools will promote adherence to standards in the provision of information, services and commodities in line with subsisting best practices,” Adewole added.