Prioritising Sexual, Reproductive Health Of Women, Key To Achieving SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the successor to Millennium Development Goals, (MDGs) is targeted to achieve 17 mapped out goals by 2030.

These Sustainable Development Goals were strategically designed to eliminate extreme poverty, discrimination, abuse and preventable deaths, address environmental challenges and usher in an era of development for all people everywhere.

In the SDGs, family planning issues were addressed in targets 3.7 and 5.6 particularly to achieve universal access to sexual and reproductive health services.

In achieving the SDGs and Sustainable Development by 2030, Nigeria’s Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo has said that it depends how well sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and young people are prioritized.

Making this known at the Fifth National Family Planning Conference, Osinbajo stated that, “clearly, we must insist on including young people at the very heart of our policies and deployment of resources to achieve these policies.”

He said, one of the main issues identified in Nigeria’s demographic dividends roadmap is the need to invest in a nationwide family planning programme which eliminates the unmet needs of modern contraception, adding that it puts a check on the current high fertility rate, and helps achieve efficient population management.

Osinbajo who was represented by the Minister for Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, said investing in family planning has been proven to be smart, cost effective and life saving, stressing that it is especially critical for a country like Nigeria with a very young and rapidly growing population.

He said an estimated 63 percent of the total population are below 25 years of age. With a significant segment of this population being sexually active, needing education and guidance to wisely navigate the issue of sexuality and choice as well as contraception.

Looking at the 2012 Global Summit on family planning, the Vice President said, the Nigerian government committed to expanding access to and use of family planning services to achieve a Contraceptives Prevalence Rate, (CPR) of 36 percent by the year 2018.

However, at the 2017 summit, he said, the commitment was reviewed to reflect current realities and it was rebased from 36 to a modern CPR to 27 percent by 2020, stressing, this clearly this shows that we need to be more ambitious not just in setting goals but in achieving them as population management must move to the front burner in policy making and resources allocation.

Worried with the country’s population growth, Osinbajo said for context, if Nigeria’s prevailing annual population growth of 3.2 percent persists, we will have an additional 68 million people by 2030 and will be the third most populous country in the world by 2050.

The Vice President however, acknowledged United Nations Population Fund, (UNFPA), Pathfinder International,United States Agency for International Development, (USAID),Department for International Development, (DFID), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the continued support and investment in family planning.

For Dr Paulin Basinga of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Nigeria, Head of office for Nigeria to reach its full potential, it needs to prioritise its greatest assets, its people. Investing in their health, education and equal opportunity ensures prosperity that is sustained from generation to generation

Dr Basinga who was represented by Ms Rodio Diallo said Nigeria can efficiently and effectively take care of 90 percent of its people’s health care needs by investing in a strong primary health care system, by delivering diverse essential family planning services, medicine, vaccines and nutrition services.

To accelerate progress she said, Nigeria needs more funding, data collations, a strong and bold leadership to achieve an all inclusive health care delivery system.

Diallo pointed that donor fund is shrinking as it is urgent to increase domestic funding for health and more specifically for family planning, adding that investing in FP is one of the smartest investments a country can make and Nigeria should not be an exception.

Chairman, Board of Trustee, Association for The Advancement of Family Planning, (AAFP), Alhaji Sani Umar said “our ultimate objective in this conference is to ensure that we bring together all the stakeholders to discuss issues of interest on maternal health.”

Umar pointed out that family planning is one of the safe motherhood protocol but said there is need to educate the public to understand the benefit.

He further added that family planning is known to save and improve the wellbeing of the mother and the child. It also enhances enough resting period for the mother as well as encourages adequate breastfeeding of the child for up to two years.

Umar said family planning encourages good health seeking behavior and helps to address the issue of out of pocket expenses.

He called on the government to improve budget allocations, create enough budget lines that will sustain commodity security some states has family planning commodity stock out, stressing that government should also ensure that there is enough funding to sustain procurement.

He suggested that Nigeria needs a robust engagement with all relevant stakeholders to understand the concept of family planning because the message is still a major problem that impairs full participation.

Adding further, he said, there is no single intervention that is responsible in saving the whole life . Family Planning is an important key to saving lives.

For Dr Ebere Nwachukwu, a representative of Mrs Debby Palmer, Head of Office, Department For International Development, (DFID), Nigeria said scaling up family planning is critical to Nigeria’s development.

Palmer emphasised that a better planned family will enable Nigeria to combat poverty, reduce the unacceptably high numbers of women and children who die from preventable causes and harness demographic dividend to grow Nigeria’s economy.

She said over the years, DFID has partnered with the Federal Ministry of Health and other partners to increase access to family planning commodities and to train health workers to deliver quality health services, though much progress has been made but there is work to be done.

Palmer hoped that this conference will help provide fresh ideas and energy that Nigeria needs to tackle the challenges that she face in order to scale up family planning, keep up the momentum as well as scale up services to all who needs it.