Enugu Moves to Sustain Family Planning Gains as IntegratE Project Ends
Korede Abdullah 
ENUGU, Nigeria – The Enugu State Government and health sector partners have pledged to sustain the gains recorded under the five-year IntegratE Project, a family planning initiative that expanded access to reproductive healthcare through Community Pharmacists and Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors (PPMVs).
The commitment was made on Wednesday during the dissemination of the project’s performance in Enugu, following the completion of the initiative, which ran from October 2021 to July 2026.
Speaking at the event, the Commissioner for Health, Prof. George Ugwu, described family planning as an essential component of reproductive healthcare and reaffirmed the state’s commitment to expanding access to quality services.
He said Governor Peter Mbah’s administration remained focused on strengthening primary healthcare, revealing that more than 100 new primary healthcare centres would become operational before the end of the year.
Representing the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN), Mrs Ifeyinwa Ohiaeri said the IntegratE Project significantly strengthened pharmacy-led family planning services across the state.
She noted that the dissemination meeting provided stakeholders with an opportunity to review achievements, identify implementation gaps and develop strategies for sustaining the project’s impact while maintaining professional standards and quality healthcare delivery.
Group Director of Donor-Funded Programmes at the Society for Family Health, Mr Emeka Okafor, disclosed that the project successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of a pharmacy-led model for delivering family planning services.
According to him, approximately 70 per cent of healthcare services in Nigeria are accessed through private providers, although routine health data is largely generated from public facilities.
He said the project enabled 29,262 women to access family planning services through trained Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors, while 14,541 referrals were made to public health facilities.
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