Initiate Family Planning to Avoid Unwanted Pregnancy, Experts Tell Women

Family Planning experts have urged women to be initiator of family planning as the one who bears the burden of childbearing and the manager of the family.

They said that the number of clients for family planning programme in Asaba, experienced increased new acceptors during Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic lockdown.

Speaking on the theme: The Role of Women in Family Planning at the Wake of COVID-19 Pandemic”, expert at the Federal Medical Centre, (FMC), Asaba, Delta State, Mrs Patience Abudu said the period of the pandemic was a trying and tough one for many families and this forced them to toe the precaution line to avoid unwanted pregnancies and to ensure financial discipline.

She said, “Women are the home managers and must drive the process of family planning in the home. It ensures discipline and proper child spacing in the family to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

“Many families have become aware, sought and taken up family planning at the FMC Asaba facility before now but at the advent of COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic challenges, the acceptors of family planning increased at the facility.

“In April 2020, we recorded about 150 clients but following the lockdown and the intimacy associated with it, many families called to take up FP, so, we recorded programme uptake of 187 in May, it dropped to 177 in June, but rose to 192 in July at the FMC, Asaba facility alone,”

She said the challenge was on how to take the advocacy to the rural communities to sensitize the people, particularly the women, to enable them help themselves.

Similarly, Family Planning expert in the State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Mrs Patience Eke said adopting family planning helps families to live happily and healthy.

“Practice of controlling the number of children one has using any modern family method, is not a limitation, but enables couples produce the numbers of children they can adequately cater for.

“A woman has a lot of roles to play in family planning as the one who bears the burden of childbearing and the manager of the family. We need to stay alive during and after childbearing to manage the home.

“I believe women had to initiate it and ensure they carry their husbands along and if the man agrees, they should seek genuine family planning centres to avoid falling into the hands of quacks” she said.

Mrs Eke stressed that every drug has side effects just like any method of family planning, but no side effect of family planning was deadly, and so uptaker must determined to sustain the programme despite the side effects.