Health
THE Ouagadougou Partnership has called for stronger national leadership, sustainable financing and regional cooperation to sustain family planning gains in Francophone West Africa amid changing global health financing.
Mrs Marie Ba, Director of the Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit (OPCU), made the call at a ministerial roundtable held in New York on Sept. 24.
Ba spoke on the margins of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly, monitored by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) during a webinar on the event.
Ba said the Ouagadougou Partnership, comprising Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo, had recorded significant progress since its establishment in 2011.
She said between 2011 and 2025, the partnership was estimated to have helped avert 30.3 million unintended pregnancies, nearly 8.9 million unsafe abortions and approximately 1.8 million maternal deaths.
According to her, more than four million women also became users of modern contraception during the period, many of them for the first time.
She, however, said the gains remained fragile as countries faced changes in the global health financing landscape, with external resources becoming increasingly uncertain.
She said the challenge was not only about the amount of funding available, but also about political choices, effective resource allocation, disbursement and accountability for results.
“Governing means making choices,” Ba said.
She stressed the need for governments to protect essential family planning services and ensure that financial commitments translated into services for women and young people.
Ba said one in four married women in the region still had an unmet need for modern contraception, with barriers including commodity stock-outs, inadequate health workers and poor integration of family planning into other health services.
She called for stronger integration of family planning into primary healthcare, improved programme-based budgeting, strengthened community health systems and innovative financing approaches.
She said stronger collaboration between ministries of health and finance was also required to ensure that approved resources were released and effectively utilised.
“The partnership has set a target of reaching 13 million users of modern contraception by 2030, but projections indicate a potential gap of nearly three million users,” she said.
She urged countries to identify communities and population groups still being left behind and strengthen the use of data to address gaps in service delivery.
According to her, regional cooperation remains critical because countries face different challenges and can learn from one another’s experiences.
Ba also called for greater involvement of the private sector, civil society, African philanthropic organisations and development partners in sustaining family planning programmes.
She said domestic resource mobilisation was indispensable but should be accompanied by stronger national systems and better alignment of development assistance with country priorities.
She said Guinea would host the Ouagadougou Partnership Annual Meeting in December, where member countries and partners would review lessons from the past 15 years and discuss the partnership’s direction towards 2030 and beyond.
NAN reports that the Ouagadougou Partnership was established in 2011 to strengthen political commitment, regional cooperation and accountability for family planning among participating West African countries.(NAN)
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Tags: Family planning West Africa