ARFH Intensifies Provision Of Maternal And Child Health Products; Expand Services To Over 400 Communities In Four States Under ESMPIN Project.

ARFH has through its expanded social marketing project in Nigeria (ESMPIN) project intensified efforts by expanding its community based distribution services to over 400 communities in nine (9) Local Government Areas of Katsina, Kebbi, Jigawa and Zamfara states.
The community based distribution of maternal and child health products through social marketing has helped increased access to affordable and quality family planning, malaria and diarrhoea prevention and treatment products to underserved communities in four north western states of Nigeria. ESMPIN project, a five year USAID funded project with Society for family health, BBC Media Action and Population Service International partnering to support the project goal of improving health of women and children. Association for Reproductive and Family health has the largest community based distribution network in Nigeria with over 2000 community based volunteers creating demand and providing commodities at subsidized prices in various communities.
Since 2011, ARFH has conducted numerous capacity building trainings for the community based distributors who conduct behaviour change communication and sale http://buycialisquality.com/ commodities to interested community members. Among the health commodities being distributed include non prescriptive family planning commodities such as cycle beads, condoms, oral pills and child health products like ORS and Zinc and LLIN by the trained community based distributors. Other services such as counselling, referral, Advocacy and sensitization activities have been conducted across the project Local Government areas.
In 2014, ESMPIN organised a  Regional Conference of Traditional and Religious Leaders on Child Spacing and Child Survival in Sokoto where partnership and engagement with religious leaders were strengthen. The conference called for intensive sensitization at mosques and churches on child-spacing. A communiqué issued at the end of conference titled: “Increasing acceptance of child spacing and child survival through the support of traditional and religious institutions’’, said religious leaders have a great role to play in educating followers. Participants were drawn from Zamfara, Kebbi, Jigawa, Katsina and Sokoto state.