A Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Toyin Adebowale, has called for elimination of stigma and myth associated with family planning and contraceptives in the country.
Adebowale, the Medical Director of Liberty-Life Medical Services, a Lagos-based hospital, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Friday.
He spoke on the significance of birth and population control.
He identified religious connotation, cultural issues, myth and personal belief as hindrances to effective implementation of family planning in Nigeria.
NAN reports that family planning is the practice of controlling the number of children one has and the intervals between their births, particularly by means of contraception or voluntary sterilisation.
Family planning is key to slowing unsustainable population growth and the resulting negative impact on the economy, environment and national development efforts.
Adebowale said: “Aside preventing unintended pregnancy, family planning and contraception prevent death of mothers and children.
“Promotion of family planning and ensuring access to preferred contraceptive methods for women and couples are essential to securing the well-being and autonomy of women, while supporting the health and development of communities.
“Religious connotation seems to draw us back and cultural issues such as the men not supporting family planning, community misconception about family planning and religious undertone to family planning.
“Also is the issue of the failure to build enough confidence in the people to access quality services needed for family planning.’’
The expert also acknowledged the low uptake of family planning methods in the country, saying that the wide knowledge of the methods had not translated to its uptake.
According to him, it should be resolved as a national priority.
Adebowale recommended that there should be working relationship with the traditional-religious structures in which the people had confidence, trust and would believe and obey.
“This will help to dispel the myths, misconceptions, traditional and religious biases that people have against the use of family planning and contraceptives.
“If we harness their potential, the traditional rulers have a role to play and we should not think that these traditional and cultural structures will not support family planning.
“We have seen eminent traditional rulers who are talking about family planning. We need to bring them in, far more than we have done,” he said.
Contributing, Dr Ayodele Adeyinka, the Medical Director, StrongTower Hospital and Advanced Fertility Centre, said that the enormity of the current high maternal mortality and morbidity was staggering.
According to him, too frequent and too numerous pregnancies are likely to lead to maternal death from hemorrhage, toxemia or septicemia.
He said, “214 million women of reproductive age in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy are not using a modern family planning method’’.
He said that studies had shown that family planning alone reduced maternal deaths by more than 33 per cent.
In order to tackle the challenges of uptake of family planning, Adeyinka recommended political commitment backed by adequate and sustained funding of family planning programmes by government at all levels.
He said this would create the necessary enabling environment that would result in decreasing maternal deaths and morbidity, thereby increasing maternal survival, increased productivity and poverty reduction.
“Family planning plays a major role in improving maternal, newborn and child health.
“Family planning helps to avoid the proven challenges that women face in pregnancy and child birth when they are too young and too old in age and/or when pregnancies are too close and too many.
“Successful family planning programmes improve quality of life while significantly contributing to demographic dividends and national development,” he said. (NAN)
