Speaking at the 2015 Family Planning Stakeholders Consultative Forum, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa Founder-President, H.E. Mrs. Toyin Saraki, has called for increased investments in personal health records to address the unmet need for family planning in Nigeria.
Delivering a goodwill message as the event’s Guest of Honour, Mrs. Toyin Saraki stated, “Family planning is a powerful tool for improving maternal health outcomes, therefore its place in improving reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) cannot be over emphasized. We must work together to fill the 22% gap in unmet need for family planning services but at the same time, we must work together to encourage behaviour change in childbirth spacing and foster greater accountability. Investments in proven tools such as the WBFA Personal Health Records can help achieve this, as it is a crucial health information delivery platform for women about family planning, as well as an accountability tool that can identify gaps in their reproductive care.”
Hosted by the Nigeria Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) in conjunction with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the forum seeks to conduct a review of the family planning outlook in Nigeria, while deliberating and strategizing on how to meet the targeted 36% Contraceptive Prevalence Rate set by the FMOH, as to be achieved by 2018. Themed ‘Evidence-based Family Planning Programming in Nigeria,’ the 2015 Family Planning Forum is taking place from the 10th to the 11th of December at Abuja’s Transcorp Hilton Hotel.
With only 16% of women in Nigeria using any form of contraception, Mrs. Saraki – who also represented H.E. Mrs. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, the Wife of the President of Federal Republic of Nigeria, at the Family Planning Consultative Stakeholders meeting, further emphasized the role that family planning can play in transforming the face of healthcare in Nigeria. According to the 2015 UNFPA State of the World’s Population report, there is a 22% unmet need for family planning in Nigeria due to inadequate availability of trained medical personnel and gaps in the supply chain of family planning commodities, particularly at the primary health care level. To address this, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa has introduced the Alaafia Universal Health Coverage Fund (AUHCF), which provides free access to quality primary healthcare for 5000 Nigerian residents, per year, a lot of whom are women and adolescent girls.
Serving to launch the 2014 Survey report of the Facility Assessment for Reproductive Health Commodities and Services in Nigeria, the 2015 Family Planning Stakeholders Consultative Forum has been organized as a follow-up to the outcomes of the 2012 London Family Planning 2020 Global Summit.