Friday Olokor, Abuja

The Federal Government has failed to keep to its commitment to make available $3m annually for contraceptive commodities and services.

This is fuelling maternal mortality,  which claims five women every hour, according to the Association for the Advancement of Family Planning.

The Chairman, Local Organising Committee of AAFP, Dr. Ejike Oji, stated this in Abuja on Tuesday at a briefing ahead of its fourth National Family Planning Conference.

According to him, the current statistic of maternal mortality stands at five deaths in every one hour, thereby making Nigeria home to the second largest number of maternal deaths after India.

He said, “As others celebrate increase in the use of contraception across the globe, Nigeria happens to be one of the poor performing countries  there,  the reason being largely that family planning programmes have not been given priority and funded as such.

“At the family planning summit in London, Nigeria made a commitment to add $8.3m to the existing agreement to provide $3m annually for contraceptive commodities, bringing it to $11.3m.

“To date only about $3 million or so has been released since 2012. The FG only released $1m in 2012, there was no release in 2013,. It was in 2014 that it released $2m while nothing was released in 2015.”

According to Oji, Nigeria currently has a maternal mortality ratio of 576 deaths in every 100,000 live births, which is about 40,000 women dying every year, 111 dying every day, or five people dying every hour.

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