By Tina George – Minna
Every Wednesday and Thursday, Hindatu Nuhu and other staff of Old Airport Road Primary Healthcare Center, Minna would be seen going from house to house, knocking at doors and going in to speak to the occupants of the houses.
In each house, they spend no more than 20 minutes before moving on to the others; this whole exercise sometimes takes about four to five hours each of these days.
One may wonder why nurses would leave the comfort of their offices to go from one house to the other. These nurses are staff of the family planning unit in the Primary healthcare center and they are advocating for the use of child spacing methods.
Not satisfied with the status of patronage of family planning services in the clinic, the Head of the Family Planning Unit brought up the idea which was implemented right away.
Niger state is one of the states where family planning is still like a forbidden topic to talk about; with a lot of misconceptions trailing family planning, many healthcare centers in the state, the term child spacing is now being used to describe family planning.
Niger state has a total population of 5.9 million of which 1.2 are women of reproductive age, however, the maternal health indices in the state are relatively high with 576 out of 100,000 live births, according to National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) 2013.
In the state, the women are said to engage in high-risk childbirths by too frequently and closely-spaced pregnancies and are not open to using modern child spacing methods.
This is what Nurse Hindatu and her staff seek to adopt when they go door to door to talk to women of reproductive age about the child spacing method.
“Our clients have increased in the past year when we began this method. We are having more women and men coming up to be counseled on what child spacing method they should adopt”, she said while speaking with The Reporter.
She stated that unlike the past where men do not accompany their wives for family planning sessions, these days, a lot of men walk into the clinic asking the nurses to speak to his wife or to ask for a condom.
In the past, a lot of women do not tell their husband’s when they start using a child spacing method but now, with what we are doing and what the state government has done, I can say, out of 10 women who come for child spacing methods, only three may not tell their husbands about it.
“These days, even the men alone walk into the cling to ask for condoms or after hearing how we have been able to advise other women to embrace child spacing methods, they ask us to speak to their wives to ensure they embrace the modern methods.
“In the past month, we have had over 10 men who walked in by themselves to ask for advice or for the child spacing methods. ”
Hindatu, however, said that they do not deal with only married as they also have talks with single girls of reproductive ages to ask to sensitize them about modern child spacing methods.
“With our sensitization, single ladies now come to the clinic to get implants for themselves. Most of them that come, come for implants and we make sure they are not discouraged from coming back. We are always friendly and open to them.”
She further said that the House to house visit would give the women with unmet child spacing needs the avenue for them to know how and where to access the child spacing methods.
“With the unmet needs of 19.2 percent of women of reproductive are, there is a large percentage of women of reproductive are who wants to use contraceptives but do not have access to them either due to unavailability or lack of information.”
One of the residents who live along the Old Airport Quarters in Minna who gave her name as Gloria said that she started going to the hospital to get advice on child spacing after the nurses visited her once.
“Their way of approach was catching that you will have no option but to listen to them. After they explained the danger of bearing children in quick succession without space or rest, I decided to come here for advice on which one to take.
Gloria who has three children between six years to three years said, “My husband who was skeptical about this child spacing before is now the one that is pushing me to go for it. He accepted it after he was spoken to be the nurses. In fact, they are wonderful. Now I can rest in between giving birth.”
Another woman, Beauty who was in the clinic as at the time The Reporter visited said she had been using the implant method for the past 7 years adding that she started before the nurses began their house to house a campaign for acceptance of child spacing.
“I gave been using the implant method for the past seven years and it has not affected me in any way. I just decided I needed it, that is why I began using it.
“Child spacing is good, it helps us as a woman to rest in between births. It is not harmful to us and helps us a lot. I have tried to talk to women into accepting this child spacing but at the end of the day, I realize it is a matter of choice. As for me, I have chosen to do this.”
She said that the efforts of the nurses in going house to house has yielded result as the number of people who go to the clinic for child spacing advice and counseling has tripled since she first fixes her implant.
“When I started coming here, I notice that a lot of people are not coming for child spacing but after these years, it is delightful to sit with someone who you can talk to before the nurses attend to us.”
Nurse Hindatu, however, said that they intend to continue their house to house advocacy in order to bring a reduction in the maternal mortality rate.
If this method can be adopted by all the family planning providers in the PHCs in Niger state, it was learned that it would be able to avert 179,152 unintended pregnancies, prevent 64,484 unsafe abortions, save the lives of 943 mothers and prevent the death of 4,937 before December 2020.
