By
Nigeria Minister of Health, Professor Isaac
Adewole, at the recently concluded Family Planning Summit in London has
pledged, in collaboration with its partners and the private sector, to achieve
a modern contraceptive rate of 27% among all women by 2020. The government also
pledged to increase the number of health facilities providing family planning.
Nigeria committed increasing its annual allocation
for contraceptives to $4 million, and to ensure total disbursement of $56
million to the states, through its participating in the Global Financing
Facility and via international development assistance loans. Nigeria will
expand the implementation of its task-shifting policy to include patent
medicine vendors and community volunteers to improve access to family planning
services in difficult-to-reach areas and among disadvantaged populations.
Nigeria will use its Minimal Initial Service Package for sexual reproductive
health to provide family planning supplies within its national crisis
preparedness and response.
According to a statement made available to
Saturday Independent, Nigeria pledged to remove regulatory barriers and to
scale up access to new contraceptive methods such as sub-cutaneous Depo
Medroxyprogesterone Acetate injections (Sayana Press). To transform its
last-mile distribution of health and family planning commodities, Nigeria will
use a push-model system, and collaborate with the private sector to optimally
transport, store and track commodities, using an electronic logistics
management system.
A new tracking and accountability system will
report annually and real-time, expenditures for family planning at national and
state levels. The government will increase the number of health facilities
providing family planning services in each of its states and federal territory
to 20,000 and leverage its 10,000 functional primary health care facilities to
raise awareness about family planning. In this vein, Nigeria will partner with
stakeholders and gatekeepers to reduce socio-cultural barriers for family planning
services, including by collaborating with line ministries to ensure the
provision of age-appropriate sexual and reproductive health information to
youth through the Family Life Health Education Curriculum and youth-friendly
services in health facilities and other outlets.
To address financial barriers, the government will
collaborate with states, donors and other stakeholders on a health insurance
scheme to make household family planning expenditures reimbursable.
This commitment will go a long way in reaching
thousands of women and girls with critical reproductive health information.
According to the report, Nigeria has over 3.8 million married and sexually
active adolescents (ages 15-19) of whom 19% have an unmet need for contraception.
