By; ALEX UANGBAOJE, Kafanchan
As Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) II project comes to an end in Kaduna State, after 10 years of its intervention on family planning, some of the women who have benefited from the intervention, has taken it upon themselves to preach the message of ensuring more women are subscribed to the services.
The women who enjoyed the NURHI intervention in Jema’a Local Government Area of Kaduna, said because of the enormous health benefits they have enjoyed over the years, they have taken it upon themselves so others will know that family planning is in their interest.
Some women who spoke with journalists in Kafanchan, headquarters of Jema’a LGA, in the state when they visited Primary Healthcare Centre, Kafanchan, explained that even though they did not have access to NURHI’s intervention services when it all started, but the few years they enjoyed the service was enough for them to commit themselves to telling other women about the importance of family planning.
One of them, Mrs Tina Audu a mother 2, said since she told about the free services supported by NURHI in 2017 and she subscribed to it, her life has never remained the same as she and her children now living heathy.
“I started family planning in 2017 and i have been enjoying my health. If you see my children they looking very healthy and I don’t taking unnecessarily anymore.” She said.
Mrs. Audu, further said, since she got to understand the benefit of family planning to the health of women, she has not ceased from telling other women about it and also encouraging them to give it a trail.
“We can not leave the campaign to government officials and NURHI alone, I have been talking to women from my on angle on the need for them to do the family planning and will continue to tell them about.
“As we speak now, there’s this woman in my area i have talking to, she is currently pregnant and her baby is 9 Months old and there are so many of them like that, so we all must contribute our little part to help them, sharing our own experience.” She added.
Another woman was also at the facility, Mrs Hassana Kassimu, said, since she started enjoying the service, she has never experience any side effect that people are afraid.
According to her, she is no longer afraid to be with her husband because she sure that there won’t unwanted pregnancy.
She assured that as one of those who has benefitted a lot from NURHI’s free services, she owned it a duty to be telling others about it and inviting them to their monthly sensitization meetings.
“Its was at the monthly meeting I learned about the importance of family planning, after series of lectures and I had to go back home and convince my husband and we both met the provider, that was how we started.” Mrs. Kassim explained.
She commended NURHI for their effort in sensitizing women by using different platforms and called on government to do more in reaching other women.
Also speaking, the Family Planning provider at the facility, Patience Akapson, said NURHI intervention transformed the unit tremendously.
She that has led to the improvement in the way women now respond to family planning in the area.
“But some clients are yet to understand the importance of family planning; after assessing them and spending so much time and energy explaining and sensitizing them, they go back to their communities and come back to us with different stories.
“The Communities need more sensitization in order to correct some ills information. Our hope and prayer is that this NURHI intervention be extended or another organization take over from them.” She said.
Mrs. Akapson, appealed to government to deploy more staff to the unit to make the job very easy for her, saying, “we have limited staff here, i am the only Nurse at the facility carrying out this exercise and everyday we get up 20 client a times, it has not been easy
for me at all.
“Consumables are also great challenge, there is need to work on the distribution pattern. The consumables they are bringing to us here are not enough, as am talking to you now, we don’t have single consumable they have finished.
“Here we attend to a minimum of 160 clients are receive every month is 160 Women. And when we hold our monthly meetings at times we have 250 to 300 women in attendance with youth leaders and traditional rulers.”
