Family planning services rise in Adamawa

Adolescent girls and older women are increasingly responding to family planning services in hospitals across Adamawa State.

Visits to some clinics in the capital, Yola, revealed that teenage girls as well as women between 20 and 55 years of age are turning up both for counseling and to receive family planning products either to avoid unintended pregnancies or to achieve desired child spacing.

The development results from intervention from an NGO, The Challenge Initiative (TCI), which is funding family planning services and products in clinics across nine local government areas of the state.

The TCI rounded off at the weekend a three-day training on Media Advocacy for Family Planning which included a tour by particiapting journalists to some of the clinics where TCI-sponsored free family planning services and products are available.

At such clinics were testimonies by service providers and beneficiaries affirming rising responses to family planning services by residents.

The Director of Maternal and Child Health Care in Yola North LGA, Mrs Rachel Michael who received journalists and officials of the TCI at the Atiku Abubakar Health Centre in Jimeta, Yola, said that after the TCI taught health officials to mobilise residents, large numbers of people are coming to the clinic to access the family planning services.

“In Yola North LGA, the TCI sellected four facilities that they support. About 3,000 women have accessed family planning services in Yola North alone so far this year.

Elsewhere in Jimeta, Maryam Abdulamid, a community health extension worker and family planning focal person of Nasarawo HC, said,
“Lots of people are coming here. Even today we received 24.”

The organisation interfacing with members of the public on TCI’s family planning intervention, Development Communications (DEVCOMS), says the intervemtion was neccessitated by gaps in family planning service delivery.