Repositioning Family Planning

By Eranga Isaac
Family planning allows individuals and couples to anticipate and attain their desired number of children and the spacing and timing of their births. It is achieved through use of contraceptive methods and the treatment of involuntary infertility. A woman’s ability to space and limit her pregnancies has a direct impact on her health and well-being as well as on the outcome of each pregnancy.

Every day, 1,600 women and more than 10,000 newborns die from preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Almost 99% of these maternal and 90% of neonatal deaths occur in the developing countries. As the first pillar of safe motherhood and essential component of primary health care, family planning plays a major role in reducing maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality.
Family planning enhances efforts to improve family health. However, traditional beliefs, religious barriers and lack of male involvement have weakened family planning interventions. Research has confirmed high "unmet need" for family planning in sub-Saharan Africa in term of the number or percentage of married women who say they prefer avoid a pregnancy but are not using any method of contraception.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Smarter Way to Compare Birth Control Methods

Image
 It’s happened at the last two parties I’ve gone to in the Bay Area: At a certain point in the evening, a group of women ends up sitting together, forming a slightly closed-off circle. Maybe a single dude is hanging around, standing at the periphery. He’ll interject once in a while, but there’s not much he can add here: It’s time to talk birth control. Those NuvaRing commercials where a gaggle of girl pals trades info about insertion and ease of use come off cloying and cliche, but … man. They’re not totally off the mark. These conversations happen everywhere, and they reflect a big gap in information available about birth control methods. Ninety-eight percent of women in the United States will use some form of birth control during their lives, and with a rapidly expanding field of methods—IUDs and condoms and implants and pills and rings and dear God what is that spongy thing—the pros and cons are becoming much more complicated to parse. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Good
Read more

National Health Bill finally signed by President Goodluck Jonathan

Late last night, we got information from a very reliable source that President Goodluck Jonathan had signed the National Health Bill into law. This morning, presidential spokesman Dr Reuben Abati confirmed this on Twitter. This is a fantastic end of year present to Nigeria, given that the bill was running the risk of expiry for the second time, having made its way through both Houses of Assembly twice. The “National Health Bill” is now the Act to provide 'A Framework for the Regulation, Development and Management of a National Health System and set Standards for Rendering Health Services in the Federation, and Other Matters Connected there with, 2014' , We told the tale of the bill’s history in a blog post a few weeks ago, and our friends at Education as a Vaccine wrote this petition, which outlines some of the benefits of the Bill . At Nigeria Health Watch, we believe in celebrating the positive as well as holding people and institutions accountable on the
Read more

Notagain Campaign

Notagain Campaign August 14 at 2:43pm THE private sector health community can accelerate Nigeria’s progress toward meeting some of the most challenging goals that have been set relating to child and maternal health, the United States Department for International Development (USAID) has said. Mission Director at USAID, Michael Harvey, said at a seminar on overcoming fragmentation in the private sector, in Abuja, that the health systems in Nigeria were facing various challenges. She also spoke on Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS/ Nigeria), she stressed that the mirage of challenges faced by the Nigerian private sector health community, she noted how access to quality service is impacted upon. She said: “But that is actually a very interesting segue into this morning’s conversation which is to explore the role of the private sector in providing basic healthcare services in Nigeria and to understand how the private secto
Read more