Dr Jega
The Country’s Director of Pathfinder International, Dr Farouq Jega has said the agency has concluded all arrangements to target 120 million Nigerian women and girls of Reproductive age for affordable and accessible family planning services by 2020.
Dr Jega disclosed this on Monday in Abuja while speaking at a three-day annual review and work plan meeting with the State Advocacy Working Groups and Family Planning Coordinators from 12 Advance Family Planning (AFP) states of the country.
Jega, who said Pathfinder International is a sexual reproductive agency, explained that the primary objective of the agency was to advocate for better funding, better policies and better enabling environment for Family Planning (FP) in Nigeria.
“Family Planning (FP) 2020 is part of global initiative and the goal is to increase access to an addition of 120 million women and girls in need of FP services but hindered by logistics.
“We are working with advocacy working groups in 12 states of the Federation and they are here. What we are doing is to design a strategy for our advocacy engagement in the next year” he added.
The Director said the rationale behind the aggressive advocacy was assist the reproductive age women and girls have access to affordable accessible family planning services for better living convinction.
He stressed the need to embark on aggressive enlightenment about the value of FP, and advise mother to embrace child spacing for improving Contraceptive prevalence rate.
He said the essence of the annual review meeting was to assess the outcome and impact of activities of the 2019 as well as plan for the next year which is going to be 8th year of the agency on the project.
He said Pathfinder International was also working at national level to raise awareness about the importance of funding for FP, adding that the awareness is not limited to 12 states, but beyond.
He identified huge benefits of investing in FP.
According to him, advocacy strategy is to engage with government, private sectors and other partner stakeholders to ensure collective provision for family planning services in the country.
Jega said the three tier of Governments are doing a lot on budgetary allocation but requires prompt release of FP budgeted fund and bridge funding gap for high quality services.
“If we are able to successfuly advocate and the government at all levels put in the required funds, obviously, better services will be provided and the FP commodities will be available sufficiently” he said.
“FP is a very veritable development tool, it helps health of the woman in the family and also helps in economic development and well being. These are what the country stands to gain if they make strategic investment in FP
Dr Jega added that the agency is committed to the success of the advocacy working group .
While saying that Nigeria has enough laws that backed FP, the Pathfinder country Director said what is important is to back those law with adequate budget line and create awareness in the minds of the Nigerians that FP is good thing that improves the well being of individuals and country at large.
The three days training took place between Monday, 14th and Wednesday, 16th of October, 2019.
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