The Society for Family Health (SFH), has held a sustainability plan and data quality capacity strengthening workshop for stakeholders on the Delivering Innovations in Self-Care (DISC) project in Cross River State, southern Nigeria.
DISC project was launched in Nigeria in 2020 and funded by Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) with support from Population Service International (PSI).
The project is aimed at demonstrating that self-care beginning with contraceptive self-injection is a viable cornerstone of sexual and reproductive health.
At the workshop, which was organized in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health, the Project Business Manager, Research and Data Analyst with the SFH, Mr. Fidelis Edet disclosed that SFH was focus on the progress achieved and tackling challenges as well as assisting Cross River develop a sustainability plan.
Edet explained, “The project is to scale up quality self-care options starting with DMPA – SC (Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate – Subcutaneous) self-injection. We have been carrying out activities like this around states. Meeting like this, allows us to ask ourselves if we are making progress.
“Also, this meeting will enable us evaluate the challenges that we face in the field and explore the way forward,” he stressed.
Sustainability
A representative of the Federal Ministry of Health, Mr. Femi Tonye commended the SFH for her numerous interventions across Nigeria, noting that the workshop was an opportunity for stakeholders to work towards sustainability of the DISC project.
According to Tonye, “The SFH has contributed significantly in the quality of health data in Nigeria. The purpose of the gathering is to plan for the sustainability of the project at hand.”
He urged the Cross River State government to make the DISC project a part of its healthcare system.
“The SFH is about to round up this project. So, they want commitment from the state government that the projected would form part of is healthcare system in Cross River.
“From our data, you will discover that the uptake was low at the baseline. But, as intervention continues, the data is increasing and encouraging. So, if Cross River can buy into the project and own it by developing a sustainability plan, it will be good and speak for the state in terms of healthcare system strengthening,” he said.
During a presentation, the Social and Behavioural Change Communication Officer on the DISC project for Cross River State, Mrs. Emem Efiong-Ebule said the workshop was intended to among other things “provide a platform for knowledge sharing and explore best practices on self-care contraception.
“The forum was also to leverage on state system for ownership and expansion of high impact DMPA – SC self-injection interventions as well as get the state commitment for self-injection empathy-based counselling integration and expansion. It is also to tighten oversight on service provision, data reporting and commodity security,” Efiong-Ebule stated.
Similarly, the Director of Public Health in Cross Rive, Dr. Bassey Offor assured that the state was committed to lead in deliverables, saying “as a state we try as much as possible to create an enabling environment for implementing partners to function.
“We also support the partners to carry out capacity building of our workers so that they will have knowledge to pass the relevant information to the end users. All we are doing here is basically to let the end users know how to self-inject these medicines,” he added.
The Society for Family Health also held the cluster summit for the northern and central senatorial districts at Ikom town in Ikom local government area, Cross River State.
