Health Development Experts Advocate Investment in Sexual Reproductive Health

Health development experts have urged the Nigerian government at all levels to invest more in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) in order to make family planning more affordable for women and girls of reproductive age, so as to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates in the country.

The experts, including medical practitioners, health educators, medical researchers, development partners, health managers and scholars, among others, noted that investment in SRH would go a long way in helping government achieve result in the areas of planning and statistics.

The experts made the call during a seminar tagged, The Dissemination of Adding It Up: Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health and launching of Family Planning Investment Impact Calculator (FPIIC), held in Ikeja, Lagos State.

According to the experts, about 39% of women who want to avoid pregnancy use contraceptives and only 31% of young people use it, leading to lots of unintended pregnancy, as 29% of about 7.5m pregnancies in Nigeria are unintended and almost half of them end up in abortion. In a country like Nigeria where access to healthcare is challenging, people will not have access to safe abortion and would take the decision to abort under dangerous circumstances.

The Adding It Up (AIU), a research document on, Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health 2019, is a continuous global research conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, New York, USA, with details of how government, donor agencies, developmental partners and individuals, could plug the various gaps in SHR through right investment, while also assessing the likely impact before commitments are made.

In a remark during the one-day seminar, the Director, Family Health Department, Federal Ministry of Health, Doctor Salma Anas-Kolo, said the Federal Government was committed to ensuring sustained availability of Family Planning commodities in the country so that Nigerians of reproductive age could access and use for child spacing and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

Anas-Kolo who was represented by the Assistant Director, Zainab Garba, revealed that the Federal Government had enacted policies and implemented programmes that would make SRH affordable and accessible for women and girls of reproductive age, as well as the need for men to be involved in SRH activities, urging all to ensure that whatever support is being brought to the country should be geared towards universal health coverage for all.

“In its desire to improve the well-being of the citizens, the Federal Government is strategizing and prioritising the implementation towards integration of core components and intervention to highlight reproductive, maternal, child and adolescents health and the elderly including (RAMCAEH+N) throughout the life course.”

On his part, Adesegun Fatusi, a Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine and Vice Chancellor, University of Medical Sciences, Ondo State, disclosed that the AIU document interrogates the issue of sexual reproductive health, looking at where the gaps are and what it would cost to close the gaps, so as to proffer solutions that would lead to reduction in the high rate of death among mothers and new-borns by almost 80%.

“There is no doubt that Nigeria has not done the best it could. We all know about the Abuja declaration, for example, that 15% of the budget should go to health but a quarter has not gone near it. It is a war for SRH because the kind of attention that has gone into it is below par.

“That is not to say that there hasn’t been some development, but the investment geared toward SRH and the health sector as a whole is not significant. The health sector in Nigeria needs more funding, what you consider your priority is what you invest in. The Federal Government needs to see the health sector as a priority.”

Speaking on the launching of the FPIIC, Dr Olaitan Oyedun, a Public Health Physician and Senior Fellow, Academy for Health Development (AHEAD), harped on the importance of launching the Family Planning Calculator.

“The importance of the family planning calculator, which was designed by the Guttmacher Institute, in New York, is to help estimate the need and the impact of family planning services in low and middle-income countries like Nigeria.

“It does this based on data from a global and continuing study called, the Adding It Up, study. What the investment family planning calculator does is that it puts power in the hands of programmers and advocates to allow them to do their county-level estimate directly,”

Similarly, Adesola Olumide, a professor of Adolescent Medicine and Health at the Institute of Child Health, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, noted that SRH is particularly important for adolescents who are becoming sexually active and also for adults, on when and whether or not they want to have children, so they could be healthy and have a good life, saying government had done a lot by putting policies and funding in place but still needs to do a lot more.

The seminar was organised by the Academy for Health Development (AHEAD), an organisation that seeks to promote health and social development, in conjunction with Guttmacher Institute, one of the leading research institutions in the world, in the area of sexual reproductive health, based in New York, USA.