Lagos Commissioner Lists Barriers To Family Planning

Worried by the low usage of Family Planning (FP), commodities in Lagos State, the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, has revealed that myths and misconceptions are the greatest barriers to the uptake of FP services.

Dr. Idris, who was represented by the Director, Family Health Unit, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr. Folashade Oludara, made this known at a three-day advocacy training workshop organised by Pathfinder International.

The workshop wass geared towards acquainting journalists on advocacy strategy to increase the uptake of Modern Contraceptive Prevalent Rate (MCPR) in the state.

“Some people told the FP team in one of their sensitization programs that family planning is bad and as a woman, you need to bring out all the eggs God has given you by birthing, else it would turn to cancer.

“There are communities we go to in Lagos State that vehemently refuse immunization and life-saving commodities, saying it is government’s ploy to make their children infertile and family planning is not left out,” he explained.

He added that some benefits of FP include; child spacing, high productivity of the mother, improved quality life of the children as well as the family.

The commissioner, however, charged the media to help change these myths and misconceptions surrounding the usage of FP services in the country in order to increase its uptake and safe women from dying from preventable causes.

Also speaking, Dr. Habeeb Salami of Pathfinder International said, “the contribution that family planning gives to reducing Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) is huge and that is the best investment any government can give to reducing these deaths.

He said the strategic meeting is aimed at building media advocacy that will yield results as well as building media capacity to talk about health generally with focus on FP, stating that, ” when the power of the media is harnessed, Lagos state can achieve its plan on FP.

“In 2015 and 2016, when we had a media dialogue, we noticed that there is a lot of information on FP that health Journalists do not have and building their knowledge base will help in dispelling these myths and misconceptions.”

Making her contribution, Dr. Okaga Adeoti, Deputy Director, Directorate of Family Planning and Nutrition, Ministry of Health, Lagos State, said 60 percent of health care services in the state are delivered by the private health facilities while 40 percent by the public health care services.

She added that, “we recognise that we need to strengthen the private health providers and what we did was to scale up FP services in these facilities by benchmarking the amount been charged to their clients.”