By Chioma Umeha
The Ogun State Government has vowed to intensify
efforts on policies and programmes that would enhance family planning services
to further reduce the maternal and child mortality rate in the state.
The State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Babatunde
Ipaye made this known while playing host to the team from Pathfinder
International, Nigeria and Executive of Advocacy Working Group (AWG), in his
office, Abeokuta, Ogun state Capital
Dr. Ipaye in a statement made available by the
Media Officer of the Advocacy Group, Mrs. Waliyat Odemakin, said all aspects of
reproductive health including access to quality family planning had been
incorporated in the ‘Araya’ Health Insurance Scheme which was made free for
pregnant women and children under five years in the state.
The Commissioner assured that necessary process
required for the operationalization of the National Task shifting / sharing
policy in the state would be fast-tracked to address the challenges of lack of
skilled health personnel and equitable distribution of qualified health care
workers to health facilities for efficient service delivery.
“Though fund spent on family planning services are
inadequate but the state government will gear more efforts to ensure that we
promote policies and programmes on family planning to improve maternal and
child health care in the state”.
That is more reason why the state government had
incorporated access to free family planning services, Ante-natal, post Natal
care for the pregnant mothers and under five children to benefit maximally from
the “Araya” health insurance scheme”. Ipaye said.
The Commissioner who noted that his ministry would
consistently monitor the activities of private health facilities on family planning
services against quackery, saying government would not hesitate to sanction
erring health worker found guilty of sabotaging state government efforts on its
efficient health care delivery cardinal programme.
In his remark, the Associate Director, Pathfinder
International, Nigeria, Dr. Habeeb Salami, said the organisation was passionate
to strengthening and sustaining advocacy activities at ensuring uptake and
access to quality family planning services for the state to achieve the
Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) target of 52.4% by 2018.
Contributing, the chairman, AWG, Ogun State
Chapter, Mrs. Kemi Balogun said the group came on board to drive the
implementation of family planning activities with the view of changing the
landscape of family planning in the state.
“This group is concerned on the rate at which our
women and children are dying as a result of pregnancy related complications
which can be prevented by uptake and access to family planning services and we
have put in place advocacy strategies to assist government, relevant
stakeholders and the people at improving the well being of women, children and
the family are also in places.” Balogun stated.
