Family Planning materials should be free under NHIS- PPAG suggests to gov't

The President of the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), Mrs. Baaba Brew Fleischer, has called on the government to make provision for both male and female condoms, pills, and other family planning methods such as injection and vasectomy services, to be free of charge under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Speaking at the launch of the Advocacy Strategy Document, developed by the PPAG and its partners in the reproductive health sector in Accra recently, she noted that family planning had literally been ignored as a public health priority in the country, and the programme is increasingly under-funded.

“Currently, family planning services are not covered as part of the NHIS, and therefore these services are excluded from the benefits package, since it was launched in 2003. Family planning is an 'essential good', just like immunisation, and should be offered free through the Ghana Health Service and its accredited clinics,” Mrs. Fleischer added.

The advocacy drive by the PPAG is for the increase of financial and political commitment to reproductive health supplies in general, and contraceptives in particular, by the Family Division of the Ghana Health Service, the Inter-Agency Coordinating Committee on Contraceptive Security (ICC-CS), as well as non-governmental organisations, working in the area of reproductive health.

She further noted that the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) revealed that 13 per cent of adolescents had begun bearing children, which reflects the lack of quality family planning services to a very important and needy section of the population.

“Neo-natal mortality of 29 per cent contributes significantly to under five mortality, whilst induced abortion, due to unplanned and mis-timed pregnancies, contribute 11 per cent to maternal mortality, which is already high at 451 per 100,000 live births, according to the 2007 Ghana Maternal Health Survey,” Mrs. Fleischer added.

She outlined the contradictions between the commitment level of the multilateral donors which far exceeds that of the government of Ghana and Ministry of Health, noting, “Multilateral donors provided US$172 million worth of contraceptive supplies to the developing world in 1996. “Despite the rising need for contraceptives, by 1999 that number had dropped to US$154 million.

“From the period 2003 to 2009 for example, whereas the total donor contribution for funding Family Planning, in terms of percentage, was 83.3, that of the government was just 16.7.”

The Country Director of IPAS, Dr. Jehu Koma Appiah, on his part, said the usage of contraceptives had dropped from 19 to 16%.

He said the nation had failed to educate women on the use of contraceptives, which could have saved them from reckless abortions, causing the high rate of women dying at the hands of quack doctors performing such abortions.

“Abortion should be covered by NHIS, in the prevention of senseless deaths occurring in the country. If a woman cannot negotiate for safe sex in this country, we have failed as a nation in protecting that woman,” Mr. Appiah noted.