Unwanted pregnancies: Niger group begins awareness, preaches child spacing
Worried about the spate of unwanted pregnancies as well as the little consideration for child spacing among married and unmarried women in Niger State, the Society for Family Health, embarked on an enlightenment campaign to correct the anomaly.
The move was part of activities to commemorate the International Women’s Day in Bauchi State, during which the SFH organised some events to press home the need to promote child spacing among the women and also end the ugly consequences of wanted pregnancies.
The group organised a walk rally during which it shared pamphlets which educated the women on the need to embrace the self-inject contraceptive which allows women to administer the contraceptive without the assistance of a second or third party.
It also explained that the self-inject contraceptive enables the women to have their autonomy and privacy, noting further, that it also helps them to determine how long they could space their child bearing and avoid the tendency of giving birth every year, as is the practice in most northern families.
Apart from the walk-out rally around the Minna metropolis during which the SFH distributed the pamphlets, the team also visited the popular Kure/Godebe Market in Minna on Saturday where its members trained the market women on the need to adopt the self inject method of contraceptive to avoid unwanted pregnancies and space the children.
Team leader of the SFH, Nufin Alhamdu who spoke with Arewa PUNCH during the outreach explained that the essence of the advocacy is to commemorate the International Womens’ Day and empower the women to take control of child spacing for the health of the mother and child.
“We started implementing the DISC project in Niger State in June, July 2021. DISC project is an acronym, which means “Delivering Innovation in Self Care.” It is a project that tends to help and enable women to have more autonomy over their sexual and productive health.
“We are looking at how we can imbibe selfcare in the use of contraceptive usage. Basically, what we try to do in this project is to train women so that they will be able to self inject this commodity by themselves at home because there are various advantages when a woman is able to self inject.
“This became very paramount when we had the COVID-19 pandemic when we had women locked down at home with their husbands, and they didn’t have access to health care services, in essence, contraceptive service. But if we had the option of selfcare as we have the self-inject contraceptive now, a lot of women wouldn’t miss their injection period and we would have averted a lot of unintended pregnancies during the pandemic.
“Therefore, this is in an attempt for women to have more autonomy over their sexual and productive health and family planning, to decide when they want to get pregnant and how they want to get pregnant. The interval they want to keep,” Alhamdu explained.
She stated further, “So, in commemorating the International Women’s Day, we in DISC project decided to partner with the State Ministry of Health to ensure that they scale up its adoption. But in line with that, we decided to have this market outreach in order to be able to sensitise women on the commodities.
“We are offering free contraceptive services, training the women on how to self inject so that they can have their power in their hand to be able to admister it by themselves which gives them convenience and privacy. It is very effective and easy to use with a negligible margin of error,” Alhamdu noted further.
The market supervisor, Udu Habib who also spoke with Arewa PUNCH affirmed that the market women have embraced the self inject project.
“I was aware of their coming, and they are highly welcome. The women in the market have accepted the self inject contraceptive.
Family planning is a good programme, especially in the situation we are in now. Somebody has to plan his family and know when to produce and do spacing, which is very important,” he said.
Some of the market women also spoke with Arewa PUNCH and affirmed that the self-inject contraceptive method is a much better innovation, noting that it allows them to space their children during childbirth without having to quarrel with their husbands over when to engage in sexual activities.
Amina Inuwa sells local soaps in the market and said she has benefitted from the self-inject teaching. “My name is Amina Inuwa. I am from Bida Local Government Area. I already have five children, although I have only been married for six years. My husband is a security man, and we love each other, but we don’t use any contraceptives.
“I am happy for this teaching because I don’t really want to have more children because of the country’s economy. Even my husband says we should not have more children, but I didn’t know how to prevent pregnancy until today. Now, I can use this contraceptive and still enjoy sex with my husband,” Amina said.
Basira Ajayi is a Yoruba woman from Oyo State peppersoup spices inside the Kure Market.
Basira said she has lived in Niger State for more than 15 years and has been married for 10 years.
According to her, she was supposed to have stopped child bearing, but she still fears unwanted pregnancy.
“I am very happy for this outreach. I didn’t know what to do and how to stop unwanted pregnancy. I have agreed with my husband that we should stop having sex in order to stop having children, but I cannot control it. This self-inject contraceptive is the solution to our problem. We can now have sex and don’t expect pregnancy,” she pointed out.
Alhamdu also explained that unmarried women could take advantage of the self-inject contraceptive, saying it will prevent pregnancy without any fears of adverse effect.
“Young unmarried women can take advantage of the self-inject contraceptive to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The person must be 18 and above to administer the self-injectcontraceptive.
“If this had been available in the past, so many unwanted pregnancies would not have arisen. It has no adverse effect, and it could stop the large number of fatherless children,” he said.
