Adopt family planning to drive economic prosperity – Expert

Experts in the health sector have urged the need for Nigerians, who are yet to be involved in family planning, to adopt it in a way to regulating population growth and reducing maternal deaths.

Family planning is the practice of controlling the number of children in a family and the intervals between their births achieved through use of contraceptive methods and the treatment of infertility.

“Making Family Planning (FP) a social norm in the country will boost the economy and discourage Nigerians from migrating to foreign countries in search for better life”, an expert said.

The current population of Nigeria is 194,057,214 as at Wednesday, February 21, 2018, which is equivalent to 2.57 per cent of the total world population of 7.6 billion, making Africa’s most populous nation maintain the 7th spot in the list of countries based on the latest United Nations estimates.

Olatunde Afolayan , a medical practitioner said “Family planning should become a ‘must’ in Nigeria of the 21st century because, we cannot continue to give birth in an unplanned manner. Having multiple children in unplanned manners can be very overwhelming because you cannot cater for them adequately and this is why poverty, hunger, unemployment, maternal and child mortality are on the increase.

“Multiple births can also disrupt government plans, with the country’s economy and infrastructure, struggling to cope with volatile population growth. A population growth that is not properly managed will in most cases, give rise to mass unemployment and mass migration to cities like in the case of Libya,” Afolayan said.

“We need to adopt family planning so that our society and country can be like the White man’s’ country; the land that we envy so much. The beginning of their development was through birth control, which is why they are able to plan their family, society and their countries,” Afolayan said at a recent family planning Sensitisation Programme in Lagos.

According to the experts, the Nigerian environment, its natural resources, economy and facilities are fast being degraded and consumed as a result of human population increase.

Nze Egbule, a public health expert said, “A major factor that triggers population growth is increased birth rate, and there is a need for Nigerians to be properly educated on the need to control birth rate and the consequent advantages.

Nigeria is a country with the largest human population in Africa and popularly regarded as the `Giant of Africa for its population.

Some of the imminent and unavoidable results of the continuous increase in human population include human congestion, high unemployment rate, environmental pollution and degradation, depletion of resources and weather modification.

Unhygienic living conditions, elevated crime rate, conflicts, political instability, scarce resources, hunger and high rates of disease spread.

Nigeria contributes about 10 per cent of global maternal mortality case load and it is second only to India.

India’s population is about 1.2 billion people, while Nigeria is over 193 million people but Nigeria contributes about 33,000 maternal deaths annually which is equivalent to about 90 women dying daily as a result of pregnancy complications in Nigeria. This also translates to about four women dying per hour.

Trends on maternal mortality show Nigeria as having less than two per cent of India’s population or global population, yet contribute to about 10 per cent of global maternal mortality.

In terms of ratio, one in 13 Nigerian women is at an elevated and high risk of maternal deaths, compared to one in 26 for sub-Saharan Africa.

MICHEAL ANI