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LG Sole administrator, others hail NURHI as project is commissioned
Mothers have been advised to make maximum use of the family planning facility provided within their vicinity to reduce unwanted pregnancies and inappropriate abortion thereby reducing maternal mortality.
This call was made by Hon. Olayinka Kazeem, the Sole Administrator, Mushin Local Government Area of Lagos as the FP unit of the Itire/Ijesha Primary Health center refurbished by Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, NURHI was commissioned recently.
Hon. Kazeem who was full of gratitude for the kind gesture NURHI has displayed by giving Itire/Ijesha a face-lift applauded their effort and promised to complement the overhauling done to the PHC by providing other things needed to enable effective family planning services in the center.
He however urged the young mothers to make effective use of this facility while promising to reach the grassroots through the CDAs. “Through them we would communicate to the members; make them understand that this facility is for them,” he assured.
Emphasizing the importance of family planning Dr. Adeola Duduyemi, NURHI official said: “Family planning is a very good means of preventing maternal mortality because when the woman comes in, she is able to prevent pregnancy, get pregnant when she wants and she is able to space her children. By so doing she doesn’t have an unwanted pregnancy which could lead to inappropriate abortion that can adversely lead to her death.”
Pointing to some of the works NURHI has done, she said: “Itire/Ijesha have no family planning unit before now. As you can see, they are largely populated and have a lot of women coming into this facility for antenatal care and other services of which family planning has been lacking because they don’t have the facilities to do that.
So what NURHI has done is to make provision for all these so that quality family planning services are provided here and by so doing they would be reaching large proportion women when they are coming in for immunization.”
Explaining further the activities of NURHI, she said NURHI is in 10 Local Government Areas in Lagos State of which Mushin LGA is one of them. In each of these LGA, we are working in five facilities each making it a total of 50 facilities and this is what we intend doing every year so that women come into a conducive environment where they can be offered quality family planning services, that’s why we are making all these equipment, instruments and environment comfortable for them.
“Initially we were in three states, Ilorin, Kaduna, and Ibadan now we have spread to Lagos but we are still in Kaduna currently but our network place is in Abuja. So now we have started the Phase 2 which is another five years. In Lagos we started in 2015 but work really started last year which is 2016.
“We are working with Lagos State government, the ministry of health and also primary healthcare board to ensure that we give a face lift to our primary health centers where family planning services are offered because we find out that we can reduce maternal mortality a great deal when we ensure that family planning services are available,” she added.
Reorganizing the magnitude of revamp done to the PHC, Itire/Ijesha Assistant Chief Nursing Officer, Santos Omosola said: “Before now, when you come in you won’t like this place because it was always dusty and the floors were broken and shattered until NURHI came and did the refurbishing.
“We don’t have a room for our family planning. We were just making use of what we have but NURHI came, partitioned a particular room, from the partitioned room we have councelling room and the other one to do the procedure. They brought the aluminum people; they did their work, the electricians, painted it. They gave us cupboard, trolley, and some of the instruments we need to do the family planning procedure and some of the commodities we need as well like the injectable, condoms, implants,” she said.
Chairman, world health committee, Itire/Ijasha, Mustapha Iyanda Nasiru commended NURHI’s effort, saying their action went beyond their expectation. “I am so happy with NURHI because when they came we didn’t know they were going this far, they did the floor, painted everywhere and equipped the whole place. We appreciate them so much.”
