By Akanji Alowolodu, Bauchi
Following intervention by health development partners, unmarried women of child bearing age can now have unhindered access to child spacing services to avert unwanted pregnancy.
The disclosure was made by the Head of Child Birth Spacing (CBS), Madangala PHC in Azare, Katagum LGA, Mrs Ketura Amos stressing that before the intervention, unmarried women were not allowed to access child spacing services because it was viewed as encouraging immorality.
She said that, “The intervention which was in terms of capacity training by USAID funded Integrated Health Program (IHP) opened our eyes to the new issues regarding child birth spacing popularity known as family planning.”
She added that, “with the new development, unmarried women of child bearing age can now come to the facility to access the CBS services because it is their right to do so”.
Ketura Amos further said that, “Our facility is situated around Army barracks, we have a number of unmarried women of child bearing age there and they have been coming to access the service. We do attend to between 30 to 50 women monthly”.
The Head of CBS explained that some of the service provided include insertion, injectable and contraceptive stressing that because of the flow of clients to the facility, at times the commodities are not enough to go round saying however that there has never been out of stock of the commodity.
She corrected the erroneous believe that CBS promote immorality saying that it is the safest way to avoid unwanted pregnancy that normally lead to illegal abortion and premature death.
On her own part, the Facility Incharge of Madangala PHC, Mrs Rose Ishaya commended USAID /IHP for building their capacity on the job saying that it has exposed them to the modern way of service delivery in the primary Healthcare sector.
She added that with the intervention, they can now attend to clients professionally particularly during childbirth and ability to identify complications which may warrant immediate referral to a secondary medical facility.
Mrs Rose Ishaya further said that clients now feel at home when they visit the facility to access any of the services provided including, ANC, RI and other integrated child care services in line with the required primary Healthcare services.
The main challenge according to her is understaffing in the facility stressing that because of the improvement in service delivery, more care giver now troop to the facility to access services but no enough staff to attend to them as the few available are overwhelmed.
