Nigeria:Ministry of Health Harps On Modern Family Planning Methods, As Aprehension Grows Over Army Medical Outreach In South-East Schools
By, Uchechukwu Ugboaja
Nigerian couples have have been advised by the Federal Ministry of Health to embrace modern family planning methods in order to live better and more healthier lives. This is part of the outreach message the Ministry is hoping to promote in this particular era that has been associated with recession.However, this is happening at a time when it is been reported in media that the Nigerian Army is allegedly administering a vaccination on school children which has led parents of wards withdraw most them over fear of being injected with the Monkey Pox virus current spreading across the country.
It is on record that up until the time of writing this report there have not been any reported case of the dangerous virus in any part of the core South-East states but the news erupted after the Army had been spotted in some locations carying out what appeared to be a routine medical outreach as party of the Army’s Social Corporate Responsibilities to host communities.
However, during the Ministry of Health outreach program that held in several party of Abuja, the campaign associated for concious efforts by couples or individual to state or limit the number of children they want to have through the used of modern family planning Methods. Some members of the Ministry who spoke to us on the basis of anonimity decried the economic recession and believe that Nigerians must now take family planning seriously.
The Green Dot Sign is the symbol of the authourized family centre in any of the state and couples are encouraged to take any modern family planning method suitable for them. It Must be noted that these Modern methods remain safe, effective, can be trusted and are free or affordable.
Meanwhile in connection with the development in the South-East, several staff of the Ministry who pleaded not to be quoted when asked if the Ministry is aware of any Army medical vaccinations in schools in the South-East, they said that even they as Directors in the Ministry of Health is not aware of such vaccinations to be carying out by the Army, but that there have been calls from Owerri, Onitsha and Aba asking why this kind of medical outreach is not spearheaded by the Ministry of Health.
We would recall that since the launch of Operation Python Dance this outreach military activities in the region have always been greeted with apprehension and this has forced almost all the South-East states to state their position even as the Army has stated that its medical outreach is not harmful to anyone as against insinuations.
