Nigeria Records 625,929 New Contraceptive Adopters among Female Adolescents

Sunday Ehigiator

The Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), through the Society for Family Health (SFH) has revealed that Nigeria recorded 625,929 new contraceptive adopters among female adolescents as of September 2024

This was revealed by the SFH Managing Director Dr. Omokhudu Idogho, while speaking at the 2024 ‘A360 National Pause and Reflect Summit’, held recently in Lagos, with the theme, ‘Strengthening Government Action and Ownership for Sustainable Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health Programming and Development in Nigeria.’

He said, “At SFH, we are in an ambitious era for health development with our strategic plan. Our strategy mandates us to support the government and partners in innovating to save many more millions of lives and improve health outcomes for our people.

“SFH’s 360 is playing a strategic role in addressing barriers to modern contraception among adolescent girls, working closely with our government partners to support Nigeria’s ambitious goal of achieving a 27 per cent Modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (mCPR) by 2030.

“The journey so far has yielded impressive gains; supporting the expansion of youth-focused service delivery to 1,717 PHCs representing 47 per cent of PHCs in focal states.

“Relatedly, A360 is strengthening human capacity for health with over 1,837 providers trained on Youth Friendly Health Services (YFHS), contraceptive technology and Counselling for Choice (C4C); a counselling strategy that has led to 625,929 new contraceptive adopters.

“But most importantly this strategy is proving a workable solution to discontinuation which is one of the main challenges of contraceptive use in the country.

“We have recorded approximately 264,626 continuous contraceptive users representing 42 per cent. Let me use this opportunity to congratulate the states driving the adoption of the C4C as its preferred counselling strategy, it is a demonstration of what we can achieve when we use evidence-based solutions to deal with public health challenges.

“We are transforming the concept of demand generation with male Interpersonal Communication Agents (IPCAs) at the centre of our community mobilisation strategies for ASRH with over 662,947 husbands of young married adolescents reached. This strategy is contributing significantly to the new adopters recorded in the intervention.

“The project continues to strive toward human capital development for adolescent girls and has improved human capital outcomes among 153,388 girls. There are opportunities to expand the scope of interventions that we can layer on what we have achieved so far towards the broader intentions of development for the adolescent girl.

“That is the reason why this P&R participation is conceptualised within a multi-stakeholder framework, to enable us to draw the linkages and aggregate the necessary resources to deliver comprehensive adolescent programmes for our states.