The Society for Family Health (SFH) has disclosed that abortion among married women is currently on the rise, especially in the face of inflation across the country.
The country social and behaviour change coordinator, Delivering Innovation in Self Care (DISC) project of the Society for Family Health, Michael Titus disclosed this at the dissemination meeting of Niger state Family Planning/DMPA-SC performance of the Delivering Innovation in Self-Care (DISC) in Minna.
He said that married women do this because they want to take care of their families as an addition to the family will reduce the purchasing power of the family.
“Look at the situation in the country, we have so many issues like inflation which is causing the purchasing power of each family to reduce especially now that the cost of buying pampers and school fees are on the rise.
“Women love their families, they love their husbands, they don’t want the situation whereby the purchasing power of the family declines. So you find women who go behind to do the abortion. They don’t want the situation whereby they get pregnant again as another child added to the number they have would be seen as burdensome on the family and that is why abortion among married women found it is rising.
Titus said that family planning is coming to the rescue of married women to ensure that the children are spaced.
According to him, 27,000 women in the state embraced the self-injection method of birth control in the first quarter of 2024 adding that 194,700 women across the state have accepted the use of the Subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA-SC) self-injectable contraception in Niger state in the past 33 months.
“Over 300% growth in self-injection rate in the state shows that 52 of every 100 women who opt DMPA- SC as their method of choice are self-injecting successfully under the supervision of the health provider,” he said.
The Commissioner of Primary Healthcare, Dr Ibrahim Dangana said that the Delivering Innovation in Self-care (DISC) project is being undertaken by the state government in collaboration with the Society for Primary Healthcare adding that 74 community mobilized have been trained across the state.
The commissioner who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Dr Abdullahi Imam said that the project has been on for 33 months in the state and has achieved success in 10 local government areas across the state.
“The results we have achieved in these past 33 months show that the self-injectable method is acceptable to a large number of women who were engaged and they have also given testimonies to how it helped them to space their families and improve their reproductive health.
“For the state, we support any method or solutions that can improve the lives of our women. The essence of family planning service is to allow women to space their children so that they can have as many as they want when they want it. We intend to ask the partners to expand this service to other local government areas and we also intend to provide a lot of funds for healthcare workers to be trained in counseling and the delivery of self-care service”, he said.
