Korede Abdullah
The Society for Family Health (SFH) has announced that the introduction of Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate (DMPASC), a self-injectable contraceptive, has to significant expansion of options available to Nigerian families for controlling the number and spacing of their children.
The SFH’s managing director, Omokhudu Idogho, noted that self-care in family planning has brought about progress in Nigeria, with the introduction of DMPASC marking a notable increase in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, an innovation that has made family planning more convenient and made decisions to space children easier for families to make.
During the dissemination of the Delivering Innovations in Self-Care (DISC 1.0) project in Abuja, Idogho highlighted the huge success recorded in the the DISC project, which he said was initially piloted in Lagos, Oyo, and Niger states in 2020 and expanded to 15 states by August 2022 because of its impacts.
The SFH MD Noted that the collaboration between the Federal Government, SFH, and other partners has begun to strengthen the nation’s healthcare system, even at the grassroots level, he said: “Global reports have shown “flatlines” in its annual reports of reductions in maternal death.
“Meaning that since 2016, the world has made little progress in saving women from preventable deaths in pregnancy and childbirth. Until a few years ago, one in four women could not make her own health-care decisions and nearly 1 in 10 are unable to make their own choices about whether to use contraception or not.
“In Nigeria today, the wide range of modern family planning methods, especially the introduction of self-injection of the Depot Medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPASC) now allows women and their spouse/partner attain the desired number of children they want and to determine the spacing of their pregnancies. We know this works,” he said.
Idogho expressrd satisfaction with the impact of the innovation has had on family planning option, noting that the success was achieved by expanding the project’s scope beyond demand creation to include service delivery and health system strengthening.
Other family health advocates have also lauded DMPASC innovation, saying it has added to the number of modern family planning methods available boosting the Federal government’s efforts to reduce maternal mortality in the country.
