• Experts Call For Timely Release Of FP Fund, Youthful Enlightenment
The Federal Government’s target of reducing the high maternal and infant mortality rate by achieving a 27 percent modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) by 2020 remains a daunting task as the year winds down.
Meanwhile, the country’s maternal mortality remains one of the highest in the world with 576 deaths per 100,000 live births according to Nigeria Demographic Health Survey (NDHS, 2013).

The United Nations says thanks improved access to affordable, quality health services, the number of pregnant women or new mothers and young children who die each year has reduced.
In a statement on Thursday, Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization said “In countries that provide everyone with safe, affordable, high-quality health services, women and babies survive and thrive.”
Since the turn of the century, the number of deaths among children under the age of five has been cut almost in half to some 5.3 million worldwide last year.

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.’