Bauchi Celebrates World Contraception Day, Appeals for Awareness on CBS, FP

Segun Awofadeji in Bauchi

The Bauchi State government, through the State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (SPHCDA) has marked this year’s World Contraception Day with a call on media practitioners to keep creating awareness on the need for mothers and caregivers to imbibe the culture of Child Birth Spacing (CBS).

Briefing newsmen as part of activities marking the day, the Chairman of the SPHCDA Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed said the day was set aside to focus on areas where there are gaps in the Family Planning (FP) or CBS services in the state with a view to finding avenues to addressing such gaps.

Mohammed said gone were the days when people viewed FP or CBS as sensitive subjects anchored on religious beliefs, pointing out that “we now even have clergies from both faiths as champions in the propagation of FP/CBS to the society.

“Although there is a positive departure from how society viewed FP, there is still the need to keep creating awareness and sensitising the general public on the need to adopt child birth spacing and to also seek medical services from health facilities, especially for pregnant women and nursing mothers.”

Also Speaking, the state Family Planning Coordinator, Hajara Yahaya said Bauchi’s indices in the area of FP, according to the National Demographic Health Survey, was still not encouraging.

She said “Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) according to the NDHS 2018 has improved to 6.2 as against the 2.1 recorded in 2013. We are moving, but at a snail speed. I am very optimistic that with the support we are getting from the state government, we would eventually reach an appreciable level of CPR.”