Chioma Umeha
To curb high incidence of unintended pregnancies,
experts have called for a boost in the use of Long Acting And Permanent Methods
(LAPMs) of Family Planning, instead of condoms and injectables in Lagos State.
The call came at the background of the release of
the round 5 of the Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020)
survey, a family planning indicator in a press briefing, organised weekend by
Pathfinder International for members Media Advocacy Working Group (MAWG) in
Lagos.
Announcing the outcome of the survey for Lagos
state in 2018, was Dr. Funmilola Olaolorun of Department of Community Medicine,
College of Medicine, University of Ibadan-Nigeria who said that though the state improved on its uptake of all
methods of Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR), the use of LAPM dropped.
Long Acting And Permanent Methods (LAPMs) of
family planning or reversible contraception, such as intrauterine devices and
implants, and permanent methods (female and male sterilization) of
contraception are highly safe and effective methods for spacing or limiting
pregnancy. LAPMs have the ability to meet a range of clients’ intentions, and
promote greater continuation of FP.
According to Dr Olaoloru, one in five women have
unintended pregnancy because they are not using any family planning method or
not using an appropriate method.
However, she added; “It is preferable for women to
use Long Acting Method (LAM) than Short Acting Method (SAM) of contraceptive.”
She said, there was four percent increase in CPR
of all methods and two per cent increase in mCPR among married women in Lagos
state.
She further explained that the survey facilitated
by Johns Hopkins University and Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for
Population and Reproductive Health, indicated that Lagos had enlarge uptake in
the modern methods of CPR from 20.6 per cent to 22.7 per cent across all women,
while married women uptake improved from 23.3 per cent in 2017 to 25.3 per cent
as at 2018.
She told DAILY INDEPENDENT that the survey was on
all women and married, between the ages of 15 and 49 years in the first quarter
of 2018.
She
stressed that the Long Acting and
Permanent (LAP) method of family planning witnessed a decrease from 2017
all-time records from 4.2 per cent to 4.0 per cent for all and from 6.3 per
cent.
However, the total unmet needs saw a decrease from
15.2 per cent in all for 2017 to 12.3 per cent in 2018, while for limiting from
5.7 per cent to 4.4 per cent in 2018, even as the married indicators showed
some 20.9 per cent was recorded in 2017 and has come down to 17.1 per cent for
the total unmet needs.
Therefore, she posited that the use of family
planning has reduced from 9.5 in 2017 to 7.8 per cent respectively for all, and
married recorded 12.3 and 10.6 per cents in the same period.
Dr. Olaolorun said, the total demand, has
continued to rise from 56.7 per cent in 2017 to 58.0 per cent in 2018, whereas
the demand for modern method rose from 45.8 per cent in 2017 to 49.8 per cent
for all, with married women uptake at 44.0 per cent in 2018 from 41.1 per cent
in 2017.
DAILY INDEPENDENT gathered that PM2020 uses
innovative mobile technology to support low-cost, rapid-turnaround surveys to
observe key indicators for family planning via local universities led by the
Centre for Research, Evaluation Resources and Development (CRERD) and Bayero
University Kano.
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