By Lizzy Carr
Stakeholders at an engagement meeting for family planning services in Bauchi State have called for government and corporate organizations to bridge the funding gap created by the withdrawal of USAID funding for health interventions.
The meeting organized by The Challenge Initiative was to strengthen collaboration between state and non State actors in sustaining family planning and adolescent youth impact, review successes and challenges of family planning and to facilitate State commitment to Fp and adolescent youth funding.
The stakeholders that include a representatives from the Advocacy Core Group (ACG), Bauchi State Sustainability Initiative and Journalists for Public Health and Development Initiative raised concerns on the stock out of family planning commodities in health facilities in the state.
They said demand for FP services is high after the sustained campaigns for families to space their birth but the is stock out of these commodities and consumables in most facilities.
They recommended the alternative resource mobilisation sources, the reactivation of the social corporate responsible committee and the need for community involvement.
he need for Governments at all levels to brace up and source for alternative funding models for the various interventions has been stressed considering the fact most of the projects are gradually closing out.
Bauchi State commissioner of health Dr Sani Mohammed Dambam Said the sudden closure of activities by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has grounded most of the interventions in the health sector particularly the last mile distribution of family planning (FP) commodities leading to shortage of commodities and consumables across the State.
The commissioner who was represented by the chairman Bauchi state primary health care development Dr Rilwanu Mohammed it is time for the State to wake up, own all the interventions and seek for ways to generate funding for family planning.
“These donors and international development partners are not going to be here forever. We need to create local solutions to the problem immediately which is why we must look inward”.
Also speaking, the Director, Medical Services, in the Ministry of Health, Dr Suleiman Auwal Abubakar emphasized the need to ensure that the gains made in family planning is sustained by ensuring that commodities and consumables were made available to every woman that needs the service.
He added that stakeholders must mobilize resources to get the commodities and consumables available now that families have accepted family planning.
The TCI Consultant, Yakubu Usman Abubakar, expressed the determination of the organization to provide technical support for the implementation of the FP programme even though Bauchi State has graduated.
He added that the meeting is an opportunity to reconnect structures that the State put in place to mobilise communities to take up family planning services.
“TCI had supported the State to put in place some structures and today our technical support is to see that these groups continue to promote reproductive health, family planning and adolescent health services.(www.krestnews.com).