Chima Azubuike, Gombe
As World Contraceptive Day, takes place on September 26th every year. The annual worldwide campaign centres around a vision where every pregnancy is wanted.
Findings by Periscope Nigeria, clearly shows that this year’s World Contraceptive day is calling for access to safe and voluntary Family planning for women and girls everywhere in the world. Indicating the impact when women and girls make informed choices about their reproductive health as well as have access to the method of their choice.
According to the Chairman, Gombe state Advocacy working group on Family planning, Alhassan Yahya, the state is expected to attain 20% contraceptive prevalence rate before the end of 2020 adding although 46 million was budgeted none has been released.
He said, “December 2020 is around the corner and we are in 17%. We hope and pray government to release funds it will work miracle and achieve or the state the desired goals. No single kobo was released from N46 million five hundred thousand naira. I’m appealing to government to release at least 60% of the funds allocated for child spacing in Gombe state because it will go a long way in making people see the importance of child spacing in the state.
“the case of Gombe is differentPlanning our religious and traditional leaders both Islamic and Christianity are at the fore front advocating child spacing. “In Islam if you look at it critically it allows for spacing a child at atleast for 18 months and what we are advocating for is 2 years.If you look at the 18 months it is almost the same thing. Most of the religious leaders are in our working group and we usually engage them.”
While appreciating the efforts of Pathfinder International, Mamaye and some other organizations for their contributions to Family Planning in the state .
Yahya added that, “We still have very high number of unmet need, we will try as much as possible to see that we reduce that through the support of the media; through sensitization and awareness creation.”
Recall the campaign was launched in 2007, Advocates of Family planning say WCD’s mission is geared towards improving awareness of contraception and to enable young people to make informed choices on their sexual and reproductive health.
