By Rauf Oyewole
The Bauchi State Government and partners in the health sector, following the sudden exit of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have commenced alternative sources of funds for childbirth spacing programmes.
Speaking on Wednesday, Executive Chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Board, Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed, said that despite rejection of family planning contraception, many people including religious leaders now encourage their followers to space their children, hence increasing demand for the service.
Mohammed, during a stakeholders engagement meeting jointly held with The Challenge Initiative (TCI), urged governments at all levels to brace up and source for alternative funding models for the various interventions.
He said that the Board would reach out to corporate organisations to channel their corporate social responsibilities towards family planning projects and other primary care services.
According to him, withdrawal of USAID interventions has grounded most of the activities in the health sector particularly issues of family planning (FP) leading to shortage of commodities and consumables across the State.
"It is time to wake up, own all the interventions and seek ways to generate funding in order to sustain them for the benefit of our people. These donors and international development partners are not going to be here forever. We need to create local solutions to the problem immediately,” he said.
Also, the Director Medical Services in the Ministry of Health, Dr Suleiman Auwal Abubakar emphasised the need to ensure that the gains made in the family planning were sustained by ensuring that commodities and consumables were made available.
He added that all the relevant stakeholders must mobilise resources to get the commodities and consumables available now that women of child bearing age and their husbands have embraced the system.
Members of the Journalists for Public Health and Development Initiative (J4PD) were charged to come up with a sustainable advocacy proposal that will galvanise the situation.
Executive Director of J4PD, Elizabeth Kah, expressed the group's readiness while charging the government to intensify availability of commodities and consumables to boost family planning services.
Also speaking, TCI Lead, expressed the determination of the organization to provide technical support for the implementation of the FP programme even though it has closed out its intervention in the state.
0 Comments