A US-based Non-Governmental Organisation, Pathfinder International, has called on Nigerians to embrace family planning as an instrument of guiding against maternal and infant mortality in the country.
The Senior Country Director of the NGO, Dr Farouk Jega, made the call on Friday at a three-day workshop on ‘Advance Family Planning’ (AFP), it organised for media practitioners in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop was organised for media practitioners working for family planning advocacy groups in Nasarawa, Niger, Kebbi, Ogun and Gombe states.
Jega said that the importance of family planning to the family and societal development could not be over-emphasised, hence the need for Nigerians to embrace it.
He said that the workshop was aimed at orientating the media practitioners on benefits of family planning and building their capacities to use the AFP approach in educating the society on the importance of family planning.
“At the end of the workshop, the media practitioners are expected to transmit the knowledge gained to the larger society,” he said.
Jega said that family planning would go a long way in preventing maternal and infant deaths in the society, as, according to him, mothers and well- breastfed babies usually looked very healthy when child spacing was applied.
He called on governments at all levels to continue to work towards improving on the health status of the citizenry in the interest of development.
The country director, who noted that a healthy nation was a wealthy nation, charged Nigerians to take the issue of health and healthy living with all seriousness.
He also called on the Federal Government to continue to make family planning items available for use by the citizenry, considering their numerous benefits.
NAN reports that health experts, who presented various papers, disabused the minds of people from the belief that contraceptives caused cancer, damaged womb and deformed babies.
They made recommendations for proper family planning, to enhance healthy living for mothers and their children. (NAN)
