The Lagos State Government has reiterated its commitment to enhancing easy access to family planning services for better health indices for all residents in the state.
This was made known by the Reproductive Health Coordinator, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr. Victoria Omoera while speaking at a two-day Resource Mobilization and Proposal Development Capacity Building workshop for key members of various Family planning advocacy groups in Lagos State.
Dr. Omoera during the capacity building workshop organized by the Lagos State Ministry of Health (LSMOH) in collaboration with The Challenge Initiative (TCI), said the training became imperative to ensure members have the requisite knowledge and skills to effectively mobilize needed resources towards conducting their activities to the achievement of deliverables.
Referring to TCI as ‘partners in progress, Dr. Omoera explained that the training was essential as government alone cannot do everything, “so we rely on our key stakeholders to help in propagating the importance of family planning and its socio-economic benefits as well to advocate for more resources in implementing high impact interventions’’.
Dr. Omoera explained further that the state will continue to make budgetary allocation for Family Planning because its significance to the development of a society is enormous and added that the state has also commenced procurement of Family Planning commodities by itself in preparation for dwindling or outright end to private donations so as to ensure the sector maintain its achievements and as well build on it.
She revealed that the state government’s partnership with TCI is highly appreciated as it serves as a scale-up of the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative project, “but the good thing about TCI project is that everybody comes together to decide the area for intervention, planning, implementation, and evaluation.
The training had in attendance members of Interfaith Public Health Advocacy Lagos (IPHAL), Media Action for Public Health Initiative (MAPHI), Public Health Sustainable Advocacy Initiative (PHSAI), LGA Social Mobilization Committee (SMC) Chairman among others.