More Nigerian couples and other individuals have been visiting health facilities to access modern family planning services as a means of surviving the current economic hardship, experts have said.
It was gathered that the number of married women who visit various Family Planning units of hospitals has been increasing as they adopt different methods of contraceptives that suit their body systems.
A medical practitioner and the Osun State Family Planning Coordinator, Mrs. Ololade Margaret Abatan, confirmed that the harsh economic situation in the country has been enabling more acceptability of family planning methods.
She said the narrative is gradually changing from when couples, especially women, used to boycott family planning, thus giving birth to a number of children that is beyond their economic status.
Abatan said the monthly reports from various health facilities indicated a surge in the uptake of modern family planning contraceptives by both the married and unmarried as a way of planning their lives, spacing their pregnancies and living within their financial means.
Enumerating the different kinds of modern contraceptives that people could adopt to control birth and also avoid unwanted pregnancy, she said, “There are different planning methods starting from the male and female condoms, we have the daily pills, then we have different types of injectable, we have the self-injectable aspect, we call it DMPNC, the individual clients can inject themselves at home, there won’t be need for them to come to the facility to meet the provider.
“The trained provider would have trained the clients on how to inject themselves to be able to reduce the hospital visitation. We also have the implant which will be inserted in the arm, we have the one for three years and for five years, and also, we have the IUD that will be put in the womb for women that can use it for longer years even up to 12 years. We have the permanent method for women, we have bilateral tubal ligation and for men, we have vasectomy.”
“We have different methods of modern contraceptive family planning that can be taken by clients and the decision to take up a method will be based on the adequate counselling by the service providers at the facility to ensure that the clients make an informed decision and choice,” she added.
The family planning expert called on more couples to ensure that they give at least, two years interval before getting another pregnancy in order to prevent high complications that may arise while expecting a baby.
Abatan said high risk pregnancies occur when women have childbirth less than two years apart and pregnancies that occur at less than two years intervals.
She said there are tendencies that whenever a woman is pregnant, the husband becomes the sole provider for the family and such a situation could make it more difficult for the man to cater for the family needs alone.
Abatan, who said it is “too many” for couples to have more than four children, urged couples to strike a balance between their economic realities and the number of children to give birth to.