By Philip Yatai
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says it supplies family planning commodities to over 700 health facilities across Kaduna State every quarter.
Dr Elvis Evborein, the Reproductive Health Analyst, UNFPA Kaduna, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna on Sunday.
Evborein said that UNFPA, the leading UN body supporting family planning interventions procures the commodities through the Federal Ministry of Health for the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
He said that the commodities were being supplied to health facilities across the state to ensure access to family planning services.
This, he said, is to help couples to plan their families.
He pointed out that without contraceptives, youths may not be able to achieve their full potential in life.
“There is also the problem of unsafe abortion when people are not ready, and the solution is simply contraceptives.
“It makes a whole lot of sense that we are able to maintain contraceptive supply to the state so that we don’t have many of our youths dropping out of school due to unwanted pregnancies.
“Or many of our youths having to do abortion and die in the process due to unsafe practices and other health consequences.”
He argued that when youths as future leaders plan well, they would be able to grow to their full potential, become productive and contribute to the development of the state.
Evborein added that to address maternal death, UNFPA supported the Kaduna State Government to procure essential medicines and supplies for pregnant women to prevent death from delivery complications.
He said that the essential drugs were being supplied to health facilities to ensure pregnant women deliver safely.
He also said that the Fund supported Kaduna State with Maternal Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (MPDSR) mechanism.
This, he said, was to ensure that if a woman dies of pregnancy complications at the point of delivery, such deaths are not treated with triviality.
“The goal is to learn from every bad situation so that we put in place a system that ensures that such ugly incidents do not reccur.
“Any death of a pregnant woman, anywhere in the state has to be highlighted, and appropriate measures put in place to ensure similar circumstances do not happen.”
The reproductive health analyst further said that to improve maternal health services in the state, UNFPA facilitated the interest of the Norwegian Government to invest in improving maternal health.
This, according to him, is an additional funding source for the Kaduna State Government to address maternal deaths.
He explained that the Norwegian Government project would focus on family planning and maternal health, adding that a baseline study had been concluded in the areas of intervention.
He identified capacity building for health workers to deliver quality services and upgrade of health facilities in selected local government areas as some of the components of the project. (NAN)
