Dr Hadiza Balarabe, Executive Secretary, Kaduna State Primary Healthcare Development Agency has assured women in the state of a “truly free access” to child spacing services with effect from July.
 
Balarabe gave the assurance in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Zaria, Kaduna State on Monday.
 
She spoke on the sideline of a three-day workshop on costed implementation plan for child spacing organised by Palladium and Pathfinder International to promote child spacing in the state.
 

The House of Representatives has commenced consideration of a bill to provide free ante-natal care to all pregnant women and stipends for mothers of triplets and other multiple births.
 
The bill initiated by Dr. Tony Nwoye representing Anambra East/West Federal Constituency also aims to address discrimination against pregnant women in the working place with sanctions stipulated against an employer who discriminates against a woman on account of her pregnancy.
 

At the Nassarawa Primary Health Centre, in Yola, capital of Adamawa State, nine-month-old, pale and thin Baby Habibat, being cuddled by her mother is suffering from malnutrition induced by acute diarrhea, which is caused by rotavirus.
 
“First she started stooling frequently, then vomiting and gradually started losing weight,” her mother Aisha summarised how her baby got to that point.
 

Development Communications Network (DEVCOMS), an NGO, has called for increased funding of family planning services to raise the level of contraceptive use to 36 per cent by 2018.
 
The organisation’s media specialist, Iliya Kure, said in a paper he presented to mark 2017 Safe Motherhood Week, that current national contraceptive commodities usage was slightly above 15 per cent.
 
The paper is entitled `Child spacing: Key strategy to reducing maternal death – time to act.’