NAN-HG-3
Data
By Chinenye Offor
Abuja, Nov. 27, 2017 (NAN) Association for the Advancement of Family Planning, an NGO, on Monday, said it was currently collecting data of women of reproductive age across the country.
The Chairman of the foundation, Dr Ejike Orji, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
Orji said the initiative would help the foundation to obtain actual figure of women who required assistance in family planning.
He said the foundation was concerned about the disoriented manner in which family planning exercises were conducted.
According to him, women of reproductive age in rural areas are far from family planning services.
He added that “family planning is one key national development undertaking that would keep the health of mothers, children and families stable.
“The Family Planning London summit in 2012 projected that by 2020, additional 120 million women should have access to family planning.
“The projection came on the backdrop of the fact that some 69 countries were exponentially growing in their population without commensurate development strides.
“And these countries, including Nigeria, needed sustained sensitisation on family planning.
“It is with this knowledge that the foundation is working hard to ascertain the number of women that should be made to have access to family planning information and services.”
Orji further said that women in local communities would be given special care when the data was finally gathered.
He explained that “this technology the foundation is about to deploy will be built into customised handset with local language SMS-based application capable of giving family planning information and other related health information to holders.
“The technology will be connected and circulated to women of reproductive age bracket of between 15 years and 49 years.”
He added that the technology would also be used in pregnancy tracking and antenatal information.
He said “the foundation would launch a communication family campaign with a green dot as symbol for family planning service across communities in the country.” CSO/OMO/HA
============
Edited by Martins Odeh/Hadiza Mohammed-Aliyu