Lack of Family Planning has been identified as a leading cause of maternal and infant deaths in the country.
According to some experts who spoke separately with The Next Edition, many women get pregnant at times when they shouldn’t thereby, exposing themselves and their unborn children to serious health challenges capable of claiming their lives.
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“Some couples could have three children in four years. This hurts the family’s finances and the mother’s health. The father too feels the huge burden if he will accept the truth,” the experts said.
They stressed the need for couples to embrace Family Planning as it allows people to attain their desired number of children and determine spacing of pregnancies, pointing out that; “It can be achieved through use of contraceptives and other safe methods.” According to them, “mothers can effectively contribute to their families when they space their children and enjoy better health as they would not go to the hospital as often as their peers who do not space their children and battle with health challenges, while siblings whose birthdays are not close to each other with a minimum of three years apart look healthier, and perform better both in school and at home.”
Speaking on the issue recently, a Professor of Obstetrics and the President, Association for Reproductive and Family Health, Oladapo Ladipo, observed that Family Planning was capable of reducing maternal and child deaths in Nigeria to some degrees.
For mothers alone, Prof. Ladipo noted that Family Planning will save nearly 40 percent of women from dying of pregnancy-related complications. In his words; “Unfortunately, such deaths are many in the country. Every single day, Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five years and 145 women of childbearing age. This makes the country the second largest contributor to the under–five and maternal mortality rate in the world. Underneath the statistics lies the pain of human tragedy, for thousands of families who have lost their children.”
Expressing his concern on the implications of lack of family planning on the country’s population, Chairman, Foundation for Development and Environmental Initiative, Prof Akin Mabogunje, said, “If we continue on our present population growth, the way forward is clear. It is the way to deepening poverty for the masses of this country. A country that is obsessed with just the number of its population can discover that it is simply breeding and breeding into accelerating poverty.
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“This is why countries that are serious about dramatically raising the level of their development had to intervene policy-wise and practically in determining the acceptable level of the fertility of their women folk,
limiting it, as in the case of China until recently, to not more than one child per woman through her
child-bearing age.
“It is currently projected that Nigeria will be the 7th most populous nation by 2050, apparently without commensurate infrastructural growth,” he submitted.
On her part, Adewale Haastrup, the Programme Officer of the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) encouraged men to support their wives in Family Planning adding that many women can successfully do Family Planning only when they have discussed it with their husbands.
She debunked the belief that Family Planning makes a woman promiscuous. “Many men have complained about promiscuity. Using a Family Planning method does not make a woman promiscuous. If the woman is promiscuous, it means that she may contract sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and possibly HIV.
“This is not what we want. Using contraceptives does not make the woman promiscuous in any way. So, men should support their wives because women need the support of their spouses in making some decisions. Many women will only make that decision after they have discussed it with their husbands.
“One of the key things we are preaching is that there is need for families to discuss; there is need for what we call the couple or spousal communication. If we want to have any ceremony, we plan for it. So, why don’t we plan how we want to live our lives. In the next 10 to 20 years how many children do we want to have, what kind of education do we want to give to them. These are the things we are talking about; it is not that families should not have children, but they should plan well to be able to take care of them effectively,” she noted.
