How Family Planning Services Can Address Maternal Mortality In Akwa Ibom State.

World Contraceptives Day is marked yearly to draw attention to the urgent need for family planning services as a tool in promoting economic development, the well-being of the people and in providing child space programmes to many families. It can also be a veritable tool in tackling maternal mortality.

In Akwa Ibom State, World Contraceptives Day was marked with a lineup of activities to bring to the forefront the contributions of family planning to the well-being of the family, how partners and the state government should work together in making family planning available to those who require such services

The services can be an avenue in allowing a family to have children by choice and not by chance, according to experts.

With Akwa Ibom state having a maternal mortality ratio of 520 deaths per 100,000 live births, experts believe the services if effectively deployed, can be used to drastically reduce this alarming trend by 30 per cent.

Also, it is believed that the service can also be a tool in promoting quality healthcare if the services are made readily available. In Akwa Ibom State, many partners including The Challenge Initiative (TCI), MSI Reproductive Choices and the Planned Parenthood Federation among others have been actively involved in improving access to family planning services thereby enhancing the health of the people.

While TCI operates in 10 Local Government Areas of the state, MSI Reproductive Choices is active in 16 LGAs leaving a gap in the coverage of the state with 31 local government councils.

Apart from providing services, TCI is known to have engaged 60 community mobilisers to raise awareness of family planning and its benefits.

Similarly, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is known to have carried out a 72-hour make-over of Family Planning units at many health facilities across Akwa Ibom State, being implemented by PPFN.

Family planning services are made available in various ways particularly in the use of many commodities and consumables, according to experts. The methods are many and include pills, implants, male condoms and female condoms as well as injectables.

Others include the exclusive breastfeeding method, tubal ligation and vasectomy as well as Intrauterine Devices (IUD).

These methods are tailored to suit individual needs, according to health experts and any of them can be adjusted at any time or changed. The consumables are less tangible provisions like soap, water, and needles that are required in the course of making use of the commodities.

While vasectomy is an effective permanent method for men who do not want their partners to get pregnant again, tubal ligation is an effective permanent method for women who do not also want to get pregnant any longer.

As important as these services are and being provided by the partners, there is a growing concern about what would happen when the partners who are operating in selected local government areas have completed their tenure.

For instance, TCI is expected to end its programmes by next year and this presents an immediate challenge in the supply of both the commodities and the consumables.

This is particularly worrisome in many ways. First, there is usually no budget for family planning services in the state according to checks and even when there was a budget line, releases have never been made. Even the state government’s contribution to the Basic Healthcare Development Fund, where the Federal Government makes counterpart funding to procure family planning commodities for states, Akwa Ibom State is not known to have contributed to the fund.

Secondly, there is an alarming dearth of healthcare professionals in the state. A visit to a health facility in Oti Oron recently revealed that there was only one health worker in the entire health facility. There was no nurse except a community health worker who was in charge of running all the services at the centre. The family planning health worker comes from a facility at the council headquarters. Even though many of the families were eager to embrace family planning to enable them to space their children, the absence of training personnel was a major hindrance.

In Uyo, the state capital, a health facility located at Ewet, though recently renovated, has no ambulance for emergency services. The health worker there lamented the challenge of responding to deliveries and referrals in the night. In addition, the health facility has no perimeter fence which makes it a thoroughfare for the community to trespass even at night.

The dearth of health workers has also forced the state government to approve additional years for nurses and other health workers who were due for retirement. This means that those who were due for retirement had their tenures extended for an additional two years. Whether the decision by the state government would enhance productivity has yet to be seen.

Also, it is pretty tasking to understand why the state government cannot recruit young and fresh health workers into its employ even it’s large monthly allocation from the federation account.

The state-owned school of nursing and midwifery which was recently upgraded to a college of nursing turns out hundreds of nurses each year yet the state government has been unable to announce the recruitment of nurses and other health workers.

Family planning services should be free, according to experts, it is a low-hanging fruit in curbing maternal mortality, women should be allowed to have children by choice and not by chance. Family planning helps to ensure that women have children because they can, not because it happened,’’ experts say.

In Akwa Ibom state, the challenge remains how the state government can leverage the contributions of partners to make family planning services more accessible thereby tackling the onerous issue of a high maternal ratio.

The fear here is that when the partners end their activities in the state, Akwa Ibom may be the worst off in terms of the uptake of family planning services.

Deploying family planning is one sure way of improving the health of the people who are within the childbearing age bracket and in the long run reducing the high number of maternal mortality in the state.

– Aniefiok FRANK is a journalist based in Uyo.