By Tina George, Minna
The Society for Family Health and Population Services International have trained healthcare providers on family planning services and depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) self-care.
The training, implemented under the Delivering Innovation in Self-Care Project (DISC), trained participants drawn from both private and public health facilities in Suleja, Niger state.
The participants were taught on DMPA self-care, counselling and documentation which aims to scale up quality self-care options in Sexual Reproductive Health, starting with DMPA-SC.
According to the Deputy Team Leader, DISC Project, Mrs Roselyn Odeh, DISC is a five-year project funded by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and is being piloted in three states including Niger, Oyo, Lagos.
She explained that the DISC project seeks to enhance access and delivery of family planning services, adding that DISC, as a health intervention, will focus on the use of DMPA-SC as a reproductive health product mix.
She said health providers will be able to teach the women how to self inject, calm their fears regarding misconceptions about self-care.
Odeh said that the adoption of self-care would go a long way in addressing the gaps in the availability of family planning commodities and services.
She appealed to government at all levels and other stakeholders, to push for the adoption of self-care in the delivery of health services in Nigeria, adding that this would address the gaps in the availability of family planning resources for women.
“Currently, our contraceptive prevalence rate is still low in Nigeria. Our indices are largely affected by a lack of consistency in the adoption of family planning services.
“This was evident during the COVID-19 lockdown, whereby many women discontinued family planning services, thereby drawing back the gains already recorded.
“But with self-are, the hope is that women will have more control and ability to make decisions. They will also be empowered to take decisions and also run the process for themselves. This will invariably increase uptake and also ensure continuity,” she said.
DISC aims to spark a self-care movement across Sub-Saharan Africa that will grant women and other beneficiaries more autonomy and control over their healthcare decisions.
The innovation focuses on consumer-provider interactions and explores strategies that would lead to an increase in self-injection among women who opt for DMPA.SC.
