Experts in the health sector have called for timely release of budgetary allocations for family planning in order to prevent maternal and child deaths as the COVID-19 pandemic rages.
They made the call on Monday during a webinar organised by Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health at Scale with the theme ‘funding child spacing and maternal health in the context of COVID-19: the experience of Niger State so far.’
The experts said the COVID-19 pandemic should not be allowed to disrupt funding for family planning or women’s access to family planning commodities across the country.
The Child Birth Spacing Advocacy Working Group in Niger State had recently warned that many women might die during child delivery as a result of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in the state.
Mary Bawa, Co-ordinator , Family Planning Technical Working Group, Niger State, said there was need for increased family planning budget in the state in order to tackle unmet needs among women.
Malam Abubakar Yanda, Budget Officer of the Niger State Primary Health Care Development Agency, said N50m was budgeted for family planning in 2019 and that N10m was released; while N45m was budgeted in 2020, but N6m was released in the first two quarters in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abdulkadir Abdul, Representative of the Network of Muslim Leaders in Health, said the release of only N16m out of the N95m budgeted in the 2019 and 2020 budgets could not allow women benefit from family planning budgets.
