Grand Bassa County – As PPAL free services reach District #2, Grand Bassa County Under the Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) Project, which aim is to provide all women and girls the right to decide freely and for themselves whether and when to have children and that every woman and girl must have the ability to exercise that right, regardless of where she lives or what her economic circumstances are.
The Planned Parenthood Association of Liberia, formerly Family Planning, has reached out its mobile free health delivery services to the people of District #2, Grand Bassa County.
Committed to a visionary goal to expand access to voluntary, rights-based family planning programs to enable citizens in the rural area use modern contraception due to the high birth rate in the hinterland, the exercise aims to providing services for the people in leeward counties who do not have the access to medical facility that provide them with family planning and awareness on sexual and reproductive health life.
The Project, according to PPAL Medical Health Delivery Officer and Project Coordinator for FP2020, Regina Hodges, initially began in three counties, Lofa, Nimba and Grand Bassa to carry out family planning activities to areas in the counties that are far away from the nearest clinics and hospitals.
But due to the high demand in these areas for family planning services, there was a need to reach out to more counties where they had already started.
She mentioned that apart from the health service delivery, PPAL was also involved with training health workers in the counties to educate them on sexual and reproductive health and rights of women, and they are trained to properly handle cases relating to family planning.
Speaking to this paper, Richmond Massaquoi, a health volunteer working for the county health team and working alongside PPAL during the awareness, said that young girls and women were overwhelmed when the services are carried to them.
The distance they have to travel, he said, was so far that they were unable to come to the Health facility to get access to family planning services.
He further stressed that PPAL was doing very well in the area of family planning because it was helping to reduce the reproduction rate per person in the county.
Massaquoi said that if the family planning services had not gone to the people in the leeward counties, there would be about 10 children per household born in a year.
Problems faced, according to him, is the access to good road to help carry out the awareness and the distribution of commodities to rural counties.
“We have to walk by foot to distances that could cover two to three days journey,” he said.
Meanwhile, Oretha Yonwloy, a 17 years old girl with two children said that she is no more going to born any baby because she is happy that family planning was able to reach them.
“I am going to take five years to stop myself from having another baby,” she said.
“It is the services they want, but their distance makes it so difficult for them to reach the health facilities in the counties,” she added.
“This exercise will be extended to other counties during their market days, which is the time to have them gathered in huge numbers,” as Hodges ended.
David S. Johnson, Jr, [email protected], Contributing Writer