Be proactive in providing child spacing services -Gombe official
Gombe State Commissioner for Health Dr. Habu Dahiru, has called on child Spacing service providers in the state to be proactive and be committed to service delivery.
Dahiru explained that by so doing all women who want to access services are offered the required treatment.
He made this call at a contraceptive technology update meeting for policy makers and technocrats supported by The Challenge Initiative (TCI), held at the international hotel.
Dahiru said they should go out of business as usual by extending services beyond the hospital setting, saying experience had shown that some women prefer to be attended to not in the hospital.
The commissioner said child spacing services could be integrated with other services such as house to house immunization to ensure all women are met.
He said the taskshifting and sharing policy allows every skilled health worker to offer services and advised master trainers to train and mentor more service providers.
The commissioner who said Child spacing improves socio-economic well being and Gross Domestic Product of a country advised for the adoption of Thailand approach in Nigeria.
He advised the state child spacing unit to set out target so that reviews would indicate if the required number of beneficiaries are reached.
TCI state programme coordinator Yakubu Ibrahim while giving overview of Demographic Dividends of child spacing said demographic dividend occur where there is a growth in the economy that is population transit from mortality and fertility rates to longer life expectancies and smaller families.
He said although child spacing is not a disease by itself, if not practised could cause infertility or even death hence it importance cannot be over emphasized.
Yakubu said child spacing is not stopping families from having children but requires that they have children they can carter for and to allow the woman rest before the next conception.
The child spacing state coordinator Mrs Saadatu Sambo said there are four hundred and sixty nine health facilities offering child spacing services and with support from partners and state government trained staff for service delivery.
She said various partners have also supported in the supply of commodities and consumables,renovated child spacing unit, formation of various technical working groups for enhanced child spacing uptake.
Sambo enumerated challenges to include low budgetary allocation and release,inadequate commodities, and called for extension of services to all health facilities across the state.
