The National Population
Commission has called on religious leaders to start encouraging their members
on the importance of child-spacing.
The commission urged them to
encourage their followers to start using female contraceptives and condoms.
The NPC Chairman, Eze Duruiheoma
(SAN), said this at an event held in commemoration of the 2017 World Population
Day in Abuja on Monday.
He identified the culture of
having large families as one of the biggest causes of poverty in Nigeria.
Duruiheoma said, “Having a large army of children who are not catered for because the mothers are denied access to family planning services is neither in the short nor long-term of any interest to any community.
‘Universal access to voluntary family planning can reduce maternal deaths by three and child deaths by as much as 20 per cent.”
According to him, “contraceptives
provided by the United Nations Population Fund to Nigeria has the potential to
prevent 11.7 million unintended pregnancies while almost 3.7 million unsafe
abortions were prevented.
The NPC boss noted that the
family planning services also helped to prevent 29,000 maternal deaths in
Nigeria.
Duruiheoma stressed that use of
condoms also helped in preventing the transmission of HIV and other sexually
transmitted infections.
He lamented that the resistance
to family planning was deeply rooted in cultural prejudices and wrong
interpretation of religious injunctions.
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