Working under the aegis of Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health at Scale (PACFaH@Scale), the groups appealed to the government to increase efforts towards supporting family health.
Reading the communique on behalf of the CSOs, Dr Ejike Orji of the Association for Advancement of Family Planning, said a major reason for not meeting this national target was the inadequacy of family planning financing.
He said the 2020-2024 National Family Planning Blueprint of the Family Health Department of the Federal Ministry set out government’s commitments, objectives, and vision for modern FP service delivery in line with the government’s FP 2030 agenda.
“CSOs in Nigeria, are committed to improve child and family health in Nigeria. We believe that access to modern contraceptives gives families a chance to practice healthy timing between births; reduces the risk to the mother; contributes to the survival of living children; and the health of the nation.
“Also, child spacing will increase economic participation of women, mother lives, child survives. If we do not plan for the future, we would have a place on the table of the future. Family planning is the most important tool to deliberately plan for the future, if we want a prosperous one.”
The CSOs also called for investment in adolescence health to promote quality reproductive health among youth population in Nigeria
“CSOs in Nigeria, with one voice, call on the government of Nigeria to prioritize family planning on its agenda to reap the dividends of demography and to release the 2021 budgetary allocation for family planning while applying the same results-based management approaches used in the COVID-19 fight to family planning programming in Nigeria,” he said.
