Ghana On Track To Meet FP2020 Targets

Ghana is on track to meeting its commitments made to the global partnership to empower women and girls by investing in rights-based family planning service, the new FP 2020 report shows.

The FP2020 landmark progress report, which was released at the ongoing International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Kigali, Rwanda, shows Ghana has made great strides in increasing the number of women using modern contraceptives from 422,000 in mid-2017 to 525,000 by mid-2018.

This advancement has shot up the country's modern contraceptive prevalence to 22.1 per cent from the previous 21.1 per cent. Again, the unmet need for modern contraceptive among married has reduced from 34.1 per cent to 33.6 per cent per the finding of the report.

Per the usage of modern contraceptives, 594,000 unintended pregnancies, 212,000 unsafe abortions and 1,100 maternal deaths have also been averted, the report said.

These figures show Ghana can meet its targets of 698,000 additional users of modern contraceptives; meet its 23.4 per cent target for modern contraceptive prevalence as well as the further reduction of the unmet need for modern contraceptive to 32.7 per cent by 2020.

Speaking with DAILY GUIDE on the build-up to the ICFP, Martyn Smith, Managing Director of FP 2020, said Ghana like Kenya and Senegal made very realistic commitments to the FP 2020, which they are on track to meeting.

He commended the government of Ghana for including family planning services on its National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) package in six districts on pilot bases and also for working closely with the USAID to include barcode on FP products so they can be tracked through the healthcare delivery system.

He, however, added that the country fell short of providing data on its domestic expenditure on the purchase of one-third of family planning commodities as previously committed.

“We don't have expenditure for Ghana on family planning. In 2016, we do hope that Ghana does publish its number coming up,” he mentioned.

Touching on the youth and adolescent aspect of the report for Ghana, Mr. Smith explained that there is a gap between the age of first initiation of sex – 18 years eight months- and the median age of marriage -22 years six months- highlighting the importance of widespread education and access to family planning services for adolescence.

“So there is a big gap there and this raises the need for significant focus on unmarried adolescents on use, access to and understanding of family planning services.”

Global Picture
The FP 2020 Progress report shows that as of July 2017, approximately 310 million women and girls in the 69 FP2020 focus countries are using a modern method of contraception, an increase of 38.8 million since 2012 when the partnership was launched.

The report also claims that between 2016 and 2017, 84 million unintended pregnancies were prevented as a result of FP2020's efforts; as were 26 million unsafe abortions and 125,000 maternal deaths.

FP2020 was set up in 2012, following the landmark London Summit on Family Planning, which raised $2.6 billion for reproductive health efforts in developing countries. A second conference held earlier this year raised another $2.6 billion.

 From Jamila Akweley Okertchiri, Kigali, Rwanda