Federal Govt, CSOs Launch Reproductive Health Documents

As part of efforts to provide policy direction to stakeholders in the reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, adolescent health and nutrition service delivery space in the country,

the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) in collaboration with John Snow. Inc and other civil society organisations has launched five health policy documents.

The minister of health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, who spoke during the launch of the documents in Abuja, said some progress had been made over the years in the scale-up of the delivery and uptake of family planning services and commodities.

However, he said more work needs to be done to achieve the set targets and ultimate goal towards ensuring that women are supported to make choices in their quest to meet their maternal and family planning needs.

“Currently, our modern contraceptive prevalence rate is at 12 percent  which is far below our FP 2030 target of 27 percent,” he said.

In her goodwill message, the in- country lead, Self-Care Accelerator Project by John Snow incorporated,  Miranda Buba, said; “Self-care interventions build on existing movements such as task-shifting and task-sharing and provides an opportunity for better, more accessible, participatory, affordable, and quality healthcare.

“The self-care demand generation strategy ensures that appropriate health information is available and accessible when it is needed. It goes further to link the users of self-care interventions with relevant facility or community-based health services, thereby expanding quality of care.”

World Health Organisation (WHO) country representative in Nigeria, Dr. Walter Kazadi Mulombo,  commended the government for developing policies to ensure Nigeria achieves Universal Health Coverage (UHC), especially the National Task shifting and Task sharing policy.

He advised that efforts  should be put in place to ensure the implementation of the self-care policies and guidelines and the use of needed tools at state level.