Single Mothers Now Have Access TO Childbirth Spacing Services In Bauchi State
BY ADEYEMI AKANJI, 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.
This was announced by the Head of Child Birth Spacing (CBS), Madangala PHC in Azare, Katagum LGA, Mrs Ketura Amos, who explained that before the intervention, unmarried women were not allowed to access child spacing services because it was viewed as encouraging immorality.
She said; “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.
“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.
“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,” she said.
Mrs Amos also said that some of the services 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.
On her own part, the officer in-charge of the faci;lity at 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.
She said that the main challenge is understaffing in the facility, adding that because of the improvement in service delivery, more care giver now troop to the facility to access services but with lack of adequate staff to attend to them.
