TCI, Ado PHC sensitize Eti-Osa communities on Family Planning as many take methods

There has been a significant surge in the family planning uptake in Eti-Osa Local Council Development Area (LCDA) of Lagos State.

This was the revelation when The Challenge Initiative (TCI), a “business unusual” platform that empowers local governments to rapidly and sustainably scale up best-practice health interventions to benefit urban poor communities moved its train of family planning campaign to the LCDA on Wednesday, August 21, 2024.

Led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, TCI represents an exciting new approach to providing life-saving reproductive health and family planning information and services to individuals, families and communities.

In keeping with its mandate, TCI partnered Ado Primary Health Centre in Eti-Osa LCDA for a health outreach to educate and encourage both men and women in the area on the significance and need for them to take up family planning methods.

Popular among the reasons given by those who opt for family planning in Eti-Osa is the prevailing bad economy of the nation, and most importantly the need to preserve the health of the women as unplanned family has the likelihood of jeopardizing their health as well as ruin the family income and the economy of the nation at large.

Not left out was the participation of men in the family planning uptake even as many of them besieged the family outreach stand at the Ado Community Modern Market requesting for male condoms.

Some women who spoke to the media expressed happiness that they were taking up one method or the other.

Nawatu Mohammed, 30, she already has four children and she came for the family planning. She disclosed that she decided to take the plan because her last delivery nearly took her life and so she decided to stop child bearing for now so as to also assist in contributing to the family upkeep as it is not fair to leave everything to the man considering the present economic crunch. “My first child was four before I had the other one, then the rest were born in 2 years intervals. I am taking up the plan because the last child I had, it is by God’s grace I survived. I took the three months injection. Family Planning is good. Because of the way the country is now, we have to take care of the ones we have and provide for them and help in the family.”

Samuel Chidimma, she already has two girls but decided to take the implant of the five years plan. She said she is doing it because it was her life that is involved even though she came with the consent of her husband. “I heard the family planning people are around and I came around to see, I have two kids, I have been doing family planning on my own by counting, I have been doing it but now I want to be more confident, I am also doing it based on health reasons, not basically for economic reasons. There are those that have six, seven, up to ten children and they cannot cater for these children, the children are on the streets catering for themselves, which is not supposed to be so. But family planning can help to correct some of these things.”

The dark skinned Aminat, 30, she looked 18, she said she has had four children and now she wanted to stop child bearing to be able to cater for the children she has already given birth to. “I want to rest now. My advice to other women is that they should go and do it because it is good. I did not spend kobo for the five years implant that I just took and if I had known I would have done it earlier.”

Speaking to Hanatu, she opined that her reason for the family planning was to rest for a while and also for economic reasons. “I want to do family planning because I want to rest a bit. I already have two children, one is three years and the other one is six months. I want to stay three years before I have another child. The economy is too bad, things are going up. My husband gave me support to come and take up the family planning.”

Mrs Rashidat Omobitan, TCI Service Delivery Consultant said her job is to oversee that the providers implement family planning services and also how they encourage people to increase the uptake of it in the local government areas.

She said that Eti-Osa is a peculiar place. “There uptake sometimes go up, and sometimes it comes down. Of course, there is awareness of family planning in the locality, but the issue they have in this Eti-Osa is that there are so many private facilities that the people patronize. There are so many Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) around here, so the health facilities, they are just trying with mobilization, but after sensitization, they still go back to the private, it is just their mindset, they come to the facility for antenatal quite alright but when they want to deliver, they go to the private hospitals or the traditional birth attendants. And the surprising thing is that most of these services at the public health centres are free, it is just mindset.”

Kabiru Adenike, Health Educator for Eti-Osa East LCDA,  she said the response to family planning is not quite encouraging, as many were inclined to asking for food rather than request for family planning. “You are bringing family planning instead of government to bring food to us”, they would always say. “And we used to tell them that it is not Government that would bring food, this family planning we are introducing is for your own benefits, to have space after child birth before you have another one, you will be comfortable and you will be in good health.”

She said that the day’s outreach has yielded tremendous success as they saw men come for male condoms, and there were so many women that took the injectables, which include the Sayana press and the implant, especially the five years plan.

Mrs Ogbamgba Oboluwa is the family planning provider at the primary health center, Ado, she said the outreach was very wonderful and impressive. “I have received nine clients so far, both male and female, the female has done two Sayana press, they have done implants, and I am about to do the third implant. And the men are coming for condoms, quite impressive, the sensitization is quite huge.”

She stated that the women always come to the health centre especially on immunization days. “The myths and beliefs about the family planning is the problem, this morning we have been able to disabuse the minds of many over these myths and misinformation about family planning. Another thing is that many of them do not want to leave whatever they are doing to be at the facility, so our coming here has afforded them the opportunity to come forward for the family planning methods.”