Expert decries more women paying for family planning services in Lagos

NaijaAgroNet:

Reproductive health expert has decried the rising charges on women seeking family planning in Lagos State, and called for more funding to health sector to help cushion the effect, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The co-Principal Investigator for the Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020), Dr. Funmi OlaOlorun, expressed her displeasure in Lagos, over the charges on women in need of family planning services, saying this has been on the rise as more women get involved.

Lagos, which has about 112 service delivery points, she said, change fees on family planning, with the points estimated at 65 public and 47 private facilities, which represents 26.2 and 10.6 per cents respectively in public and private clinics.

Family planning indicators, she said, must cut across, calling upon government and all well-meaning investors, to allocate more funds on consumables and logistics to ensure improved impact on family planning programmes, and reduce the charges even though its prevalent in both public and private clinical facilities.

Dr. Olaolorun while sharing the scorecard on the per cent of public and private clinical facilities alongside the offering and current in and out of stock by methods survey in Lagos, told NaijaAgroNet that government could also offer vouchers to the poorest women by using an equity approach and graded billing system.

Other Family Planning Indicators, she pointed out to include access, equity, quality and choice, just as out of the seven states sampled, consisting of 302 Enumeration Areas (EA), Lagos State had 52.

The programme, NaijaAgroNet recalls was supported by the Federal Ministry of Health, National Population Commission, National Bureau of Statistics, Lagos State Ministry of Health , Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health (Johns Hopkins University) as well as Pathfinder International and was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Uj. N. Dominic/GEE

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