Community Outreach Best Method of Promoting Family Planning, Hygiene

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Community Outreach Best Method of Promoting Family Planning, Hygiene
By: Ahmed Aminu, Dutse
A health worker, Hajiya Aisha Bala says community outreach is the best and fastest method of promoting family planning and personal hygiene in semi urban and rural areas.
Aisha, who is the head of antenatal care unit of Madobi Primary Healthcare Centre in Dutse, Jigawa State, said it was easier to get couples to accept family commodities when the women and their husbands are talked to directly.
“When we meet them in their respective locations and houses they feel more at home and comfortable with us and more free to asks questions on the issue, and that is making them to easily understand and believe the importance of family planning and hygiene,” she said.
The health worker told The Syndicate that they had recorded very good responses through the community advocacy programmes.
“What we usually do is to gather them in the house of the village or hamlet head together with the leaders of their families, and talk to them on the importance and benefits of personal hygiene and family planning.
“It is also an opportunity for newly married couples interested in delaying child bearing for school or other reasons to know about the processes and available family planning services and commodities.
“In any outreach visit, we weekly record between 300 to 400 percent increase in the number of those willing to accept family planning services and those who embrace personal hygiene practices.
“Any month that we go out for advocacy, we always run short of the commodities because of demand from those intereted in the services. What we do after that is to ask them to come to the clinic, and they most times, come in large number.”
On the categories of women embracing family planning, Aisha said they were between the age 24 and 45.
She said that as health personnel, they were aware of the religious and cultural issues likely to cause misunderstanding and have tried very well to avoid them.
Aisha, who is also the deputy head of the health centre, said they would appreciate support to enable them undertake frequent health outreach in rural areas in order to sustain the efforts and encourage more couples to embrace family planning services and best sanitation practices.

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