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……As health commissioner walked out of the meeting
From: Linus Oota, Lafia
A consultant with Pathfinder international, a health organisation, Dr. Yemi Osanyin, has revealed that findings of the family planning situational analysis in Nasarawa State conducted showed that out of 808 public health facilities in the state providing family planning services, only 171 were functional.
He urged the state government to give family planning programmes the needed priority through adequate funding by ensuring that family planning contraceptives and other services are available in public facilities.
Osanyin stated this, on Wednesday, in Lafia, during a one day dissemination of the findings of the family planning services and Analysis conducted as part of the development of Nasarawa State organise by the state ministry of health in collaboration with PATHFINDER international and Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health (PACFAH)
Earlier, there was mild drama before the commencement of the meeting, the state’s Commissioner for Health, Dr. Daniel Iya, who was already seated to declare the meeting open picked up his files and walked out of the meeting in anger when he realised that the state ministry’s Director of Public Health was not at the meeting and wondered why the director would boycott a meeting he personally attended as commissioner.
All efforts by members of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly committee on health and appropriation who were equally in attendance to calm down the commissioner prove abortive and it took the organisers more than one hour to re-organise themselves for the meeting to continue.
Dr. Osanyin identified ignorance, lack of knowledge, cultural and religion beliefs, funding, political will, inaccessibility as the major factors affecting family planning.
“What we are doing today is to disseminate findings of the family planning situation analysis in Nasarawa State, that is a costed implementation plan of the state, how do we support women to have safe delivery and to know how the next pregnant to come
“Because the importance of family planning cannot be over-emphasised, it strengthens the health of the woman directly and the man indirectly as it enables sexually-active women and girls protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies.” he said.
Also speaking, the PACFaH representative, Aanu Rotimi, urged women to embrace family planning programmes, adding that it stops women and girls from having unwanted pregnancy.
He called on the state government to take full ownership by giving Family Planning programmes all the necessary support in terms of funding and reinstated the commitment of the organisation to continue to educate women and the people on the need to embrace family planning in the interest of their health and proper planning.
