A health centre in Lafia, the Nasarawa state capital, has said despite the COVID-19 pandemic, more women of reproductive age accessed family planning services from its facility.
The state focal person, Mrs. Salome AyaAya, who spoke through the officer in charge of facility at the Primary Healthcare Centre, Doma Road Lafia, Mr. Abdulmuminu Aliyu, Monday said the centre had received 57 percent above its usual requests of implant method since the beginning of the lockdown.
She said the increase in the uptake was as a result of the house to house sensitisation embarked upon by the health workers.
She also stated that the number of people accessing family planning in the facility have increased from 43 to 57 percent.
“Now, the compliance is high. They have been turning up. If you look at our record, you will see that it is a little bit increased compared to the previous month.
On the implants, Salome stated that only six percent of women of child bearing age accessed the method in January, while it was 40% by February.
She further stated that the availability and access to family planning services helped many women to space their children, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to intimacy amongst spouses occasioned by lockdown and stay at home restriction.
“COVID-19 is one of the factors that affect our health service delivery because people are afraid to come down to facilities to access health care delivery due to this pandemic.
“So, we decided to organise a kind of outreach services. We go house to house and deliver the services to them because we don’t want them to miss it. The number has increased.
“We were able to educate a lot of women on the benefits of family planning because this is the time they should think of child spacing.”
