Healthcare service providers have been encouraged to support women’s contraceptive decisions whatever they may be.
The Innovation for Choice and Autonomy (ICAN) project made this call on Wednesday at their end-of-project dissemination meeting held at Silk suit in Jos.
The program officer on the ICAN project, Ms. Aminat Tijani, stated that the ICAN project is a four-year project which was launched in 2019 and is coordinated by Akena Plus Health Trust, a non-governmental research organization.
“The implementation research component of the ICAN project was conducted to provide evidence-based data to guide the national scale-up of DMPA-SC for self-injection (SI) within a total market approach, encompassing both the public and private sectors,” she said.
Ms Tijani said the project aimed to assess how DMPA-SC for self-injection programs are meeting the needs of women.
“The research was conducted in three states; Lagos, Enugu and Plateau, where DMPA-SC programs have been implemented,’’ she said.
According to ICAN program manager, Mrs Chioma Okoli, highlighted that the main objectives of the ICAN implementation research was to document the quality of counselling provided to women seeking DMPA-SC for self-injection (SI), identify what support providers need to better deliver DMPA-SC for SI to clients and how DMPA-SC delivery programs are meeting the needs of women and providers as well.
She said on the course of their research, about 449 women were interviewed in both Enugu and Plateau States about their contraceptive journey.
Mrs Okoli stressed that two local government areas of Jos North and Jos South were covered in Plateau State, adding that interviews were also conducted with healthcare providers trained on DMPA-SC service provision to assess the quality of care they offer to women seeking DMPA-SC for self-injection.
She highlighted a key recommendation from the project findings: for training service providers to adopt a rights-based approach in order to improve the quality of care, particularly for young, unmarried women seeking DMPA-SC for self-injection.
The Director, Planning, Research and Statistics (DPRS), from the Plateau State primary health care board, Doctor Peret B. Dadah, said the board is appreciative of the work and efforts of the ICAN project.
“In Plateau State we always rely on data for decision-making,” she said.
Participants raised concerns on the availability of DMPA-SC, urging the State government to consider buying to complement the efforts of the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH).
The dissemination meeting was attended by stakeholders from the State Primary Healthcare Board and Ministry of Health among others.