FG targets zero maternal mortality through family planning

The Federal Government has reaffirmed its commitment to achieving zero maternal mortality in Nigeria by providing access to affordable family planning services.

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Dr Samuel Oyeniyi, Director of the Reproductive Health Division, Family Health Department, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, made this known on Tuesday in Abuja.

Oyeniyi spoke at the End of Project Dissemination Meeting for the Catalytic Opportunity Funds (COF) Hormonal Intra-Uterine Devices (IUD) Scale-Up Project.

COF is a flexible funding pool managed by the Hormonal IUD Access Group, aimed at driving the scale-up of hormonal IUDs in targeted countries.

The project was implemented in Delta and Kano states in 2024.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2017 placed Nigeria’s maternal mortality rate at 917 deaths per 100,000 live births, rising by nearly 14 per cent in 2020 to 1,047 deaths.

According to Oyeniyi, achieving zero maternal mortality is possible through targeted approaches in implementing family planning (FP) programmes.

“We just need to put in more effort, be more strategic, and we need to be intervention-driven. Yes, we can.

“For FP, we can continue to do the things that we were doing before, but we need to bring some other things into the system.

“We need to be doing more high-impact practices, and we will be doing more integration in our implementation for us to be able to have a good impact on FP”.

Oyeniyi said plans were in place to prioritise postpartum and post-abortion FP, particularly for addressing high-risk pregnancies.

He also emphasised the importance of integrating new innovations to scale up FP programmes and achieve better results.

The director noted the need to ensure access to FP services for rural communities, including better information, counselling, and commodities.

He called on all stakeholders to adopt all available strategies to maximise the impact of FP programmes in reducing maternal mortality rates.

Dr Umu Isa, Reproductive Health and FP Coordinator at the Kano State Ministry of Health, noted the programme’s impact in training 110 service providers across 10 Local Government Areas (LGAs), which is expected to improve FP indices in the state.

According to Isa, the training covered all FP methods, not just hormonal IUDs, and the state met its objectives for the programme. Lessons learned will be applied to other councils not part of the initial project.

The key activities of the programme included capacity building, demand generation, and data strengthening to enhance hormonal IUD utilisation.

NAN/Wumi