Esther Yonah, the Integrate Project’s task-shifting and task-sharing policy coordinator, says at least 41,000 rural women in Nasarawa State have adopted family planning.

Ms Yonah, who is also the head of gender, adolescent, school health services and elderly care in the state Ministry of Health, said this during the state IntegratE Mid-Project Dissemination meeting in Lafia on Friday.

The meeting was held by the state Ministry of Health, Nasarawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, in collaboration with the Society for Family Health (SFH), the project’s lead implementing partner.

IntegratE Project is an initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to increase service delivery for contraceptive mix and primary healthcare among community pharmacists and patent and proprietary medicine vendors (PPMVs).

The project is being implemented by SFH and other partners in collaboration with the state government.

Ms Yonah said the figure was just for women who were accessing family planning from the private CPs and PPMVs in the 13 local government areas (LGAs) of the state.

“This is the data that was reported and it is quite good, and there are about 11,000 women who are accessing non active reversible contraceptive.

“With this data, we will keep improving, and the state will soon reach its contraceptive prevalence rate for family planning,” Ms Yonah said.

She further said that from the data collected, the CPs and PPMVs had provided 1,155,651 condoms, 23,671 oral pills, 5,604 injectables, 4,781 implants to their clients from 2022 to 2024.

The state technical adviser of the Society for Family Health, Emmanuel Odiniya, said CPs and PPMVs had been trained to provide quality family planning services in the communities.

“They are the first point of contact to the people in the communities seeking family planning; hence, there is a need to train them to be more efficient.

“As part of the training, they were generating data from all the family planning services they have provided for the project,” Mr Odiniya said.

In a remark, the permanent secretary of the of the Ministry of Health, John Damina, said the state government had put measures in place to ensure the project’s sustainability.

He pledged that the government would continue to improve the welfare of the people in the state. 

(NAN)