Health coalition is asking Buhari to look into existing interventions on maternal and child health, and to prioritise commitments made to improve family planning uptakes to improve the health of mothers and babies.
Nigerian government is backpedalling on commitments it made at a London Summit in 2010 to funding procurement for family planning commodities, a coalition of health groups said in their first briefing to president-elect Muhammadu Buhari.The group, Civil Society for Family Planning in Nigeria (CISFP) said Nigeria’s pledge to provide an annual total of $11.35 million (around N2.2 billion) to procure commodities for family planning has “not been fully realised as promised.”It also said the government developed a four-year blueprint to scale up family planning nationwide, expected to cost more than $600 million (around N119 billion) until 2018, “and yet no financial allocation to implement this plan,” according to CISFP national coordinator Wale Adeleye.The demand, in a seven-point ASK on incoming Buhari administration (to be inaugurated on May 29) comes amidst concern that the major political parties and candidates did not give priority to health in their election campaigns.“That is why we are speaking out, and we will continue to engage them to let them see the necessity,” Adeleye told Daily Trust.The seven-point ASK also include a focus on financing reproductive health and family planning through public-private partnerships; implement work plans developed by the UN Commission for Life-Saving Commodities which President Goodluck Jonathan co-chairs alongside the Swedish prime minister; full implementation of the newly signed National Health Act; increasing health manpower.It also includes demand for opportunity to harness Nigeria’s demographic dividend based on an increasing number of working-age people living in urban areas; access to commodities, choice and equity as a human right to speed up demographic transition and national development.“We collectively assert that these priorities, as recommended to the government of Nigeria, will reduce maternal and child mortality, improve access and affordability of reproductive health and family planning services in Nigeria and, ultimately, economic development,” said the coalition.Among the coalition are MamaYe (Evidence for Action), International Pregnancy Advisory Services, Population Council International, Champions for Change, Pathfinder International and Association for Reproductive and Family Health.Others are International Consortium on Emergency Contraceptives, Marie Stopes International Organisation Nigeria, Bayer Healthcare and CISFP.Click here to see the commitments that the Nigerian government made on maternal and newborn health and family planning. Written and shared with MamaYe by Judd-Leonard Okafor, a Champion-journalist for maternal and newborn health