Unplanned Pregnancy: Family Planning to The Rescue. By Yunusa Abugi.

 

Unplanned Pregnancy: Family Planning to The Rescue.

By Yunusa Abugi.

A normal day at the Primary Healthcare Center at Beji, a semi – urban community, about 25 kilometres away from Minna, the Niger state capital, runs between 8am and 12 noon. But on this day, it was a bee hive of activities even as at 2pm at the family planning otherwise called child spacing clinic.

Nurse Halima Musa, Officer Incharge at the clinic said situations like that occur on market days. According to her, on days like that she and her colleagues at the clinic plan to work longer hours to ensure that all the women who come for child spacing services are attended to.

One of the women visiting the clinic for child spacing services is Zainab Tijjani, a mother of three. She said she was at the clinic to ensure that her recent experience did not repeat itself.

"Yes! I had an unexpected pregnancy when I was breastfeeding my second child and got pregnant less than one year, we had a difficult time… because the pregnancy was not planned for…”

She said she became pregnant for her third child while still breastfeeding her nine months old child. According to her she would have had a better control on when to become pregnant if she had the right information on child spacing before.

“…although we were told about Family Planning, but we didn't take it serious then thinking that it will prevent me from getting pregnant when I wanted to get another child”.

Child spacing experts say what Mrs Tijani was talking about is part of the myths and misconceptions that surround child spacing in urban, rural and semi - rural communities in the state.

“…truly with the last experience after I gave birth to the third child without enough spacing, my husband quickly brought me here that is how I started and actually I come here because of family planning. I started six years ago and nothing has happened to me health-wise you can see me and I have no fear anymore about Family Planning I tell my people about it.”

Aisha Nasir, a 30years old house wife was also at the clinic. She told a team of journalists on a field reporting trip to the Beji clinic that she is lucky to have learnt about child spacing immediately after she got married.

With smiles all over her face, she said “at the time I got married if not because I am on Family Planning I would have given birth to 4 children now but I have 2 that I can cater for”.

She credits family planning for what she described as a healthy family. “My children are 10 years and 5 years respectively, I have been using this method for 7 years and have never had problems because I come for check-up often”.

On how she heard about Family Planning, she said “…I got the information from a neighbour about the services at this centre in Beji PHC, …I came with my husband for the service” adding she may have two children today but over - all “we intend to have four children.” 

Nurse Musa says women like Zainab are able to talk confidently about child spacing because when they visit the clinic they are adequately counseled on the various methods available at the clinic for child spacing.

“even though we counsel the clients on the various methods, most of them come with a mindset for pills. However, after counselling we give them the option to pick the one they seem to like most”.

Mother of three Zainab Tijani agrees that the choice of method to be enrolled upon was ultimately hers. “I started with pills but have changed to injection now not that I have problems with pills but willingly and the two worked perfectly for my system/body” adding "I chose the method of FP on my own after I was screened but I came back to change to injection as my preferable method now although I was further counselled before I also started it".

John Shekwoduza Chawa is the North Central Region Coordinator for the Plan Parenthood Federation of Nigeria, PPFN. He said it is important that women are counselled but allowed to make the choice they prefer themselves. He said it is part of their professional ethics to allow clients to freely make their choice, this he confirms is part of the things that is encouraging more women in the state to willingly step forward to access child spacing services

According to him, between 500 to 700 clients visit PPFN centre in Minna to access services on monthly basis.  “…we receive no fewer than 20 to 30 service seekers daily and we don't keep them waiting, “

He said fewer clients visit the centre during the raining season, … due to majority from rural areas were on their farms”.

He said the PPFN centre witness other forms of challenges in providing services to families who need them.

“… we offer all methods of Family Planning here at the centre but we are often challenged by out of stock for some commodities, while some are always in excess some are often in short supply, because of client’s choice of services”.

Nurse Sani admits the Beji PHC also experience similar challenges. “We record over 100 clients per month and average of 20 per day, yesterday alone I provided services to fifty clients. I use to go to other service providers to get commodities when I am out of stock and our clients are satisfied with our services here”.

She also said they also experience some cultural difficulties which do not allow women proceed to enrol for the services when their husbands refuse them from doing so. In situations like that she said they fall back on community leaders to help out.

“We use to have monthly meetings with WDC, the community heads, religious leaders in the area to sensitize them on the use and advantages of Family Planning, both major tribes of Fulani's and Gbagyi’s come for the services here at the centre”.

Research confirms that the idea of unplanned pregnancies has been prevalent in our communities. Natural Family Planning (NFP) had been in use even in the olden days. Families rely on the ability to track ovulation in order to prevent pregnancy, but that doesn’t seem to suffice anymore.

However, with high rate of maternal mortality and hardships encountered by families who have unplanned pregnancies, international organizations like Pathfinder International and other stakeholders have taken the lead on sensitizing families on the need to embrace the modern ways of child spacing.

With a staggering statistics from WHO, 1.9 billion Women of Reproductive Age group (15-49 years) worldwide in 2019 are seeking one form of contraceptive or the other.  270 million of these number have an unmet need for contraception globally. Yet less than half of the need for family planning was met in Middle and Western Africa. These and many more reasons among others is why it is necessary to embrace family planning as a way of avoiding unplanned pregnancies.