COMMUNITY Based Organisations (CBOs), religious leaders and advocacy champions working on Vesico Vagina Fistula (VVF) recently met in Kaduna to review successes and challenges learnt from their activities in the last two years working to mitigate the impact of fistula in the country.
The meeting, which drew 45 community activists and religious leaders from the northern states to Kaduna reviewed the community engagement strategy and discussed the expansion of fistula care project in the country.
Programme Director, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Efem Iyeme Efem, in a communiqu� issued at the end of the meeting, said, ?because of the good work you are doing in the communities, the fistula project in the country has become a model for many people and organisations outside of this country to the extent that many of them have given indications of wanting to visit the country to understudy what you are doing for replication in their countries.?
He said the project and USAID was presently reviewing he treatment programme for VVF in the country with the aim of evolving strategies for maximising the presence of other programmes in the field.
?We are reviewing the work of other USAID programmes in the field to focus energy to achieve more results, for instance, we can relinquish our family planning programs to focus on fistula alone, if we do this we can then achieve more in fistula and allow other programmes to do family planning and others,? he said.
Community mobilisation officer USAID Fistula care project, Halima Sadiyya Abdullahi said the meeting shared maternal mortality law of Ebonyi State and the fistula task force in the state for others to begin the process of replicating it in their various states.
?We shared success stories from the fields to serve as encouragement to others to increase what they are doing in the area of fistula prevention,? she said.
Abdullahi also said the meeting discussed and prepared the community organisations for the purposed evaluation plans of the fistula care project in the country.
Executive Director of Kebbi Youth Vanguard, Usman Bello said community understanding of fistula is changing as a result of their work in the country.
He said his organisation has been able to mount successfully several advocacy and sensitisation programmes in the two communities it is working in Kebbi State.
Bello said from their work tradition, poverty and refusal by many families to encourage their pregnant women to access antenatal services and deliver at hospitals as some of the factors driving fistula in the country.
He identified lack of adequate funding for their activities as one of the challenges that is limiting their successes in the communities.
Samuel Joshua Bamaiyi of Rural Youth Initiative, a community based organisation also in Kebbi State said its work in Kweido and Bayaya Local Government in Argungu local government has recorded many achievements in the last one year.
He said they have been able to meet about 30,946 men and 12,014 females with over 40,465 information, education and communication materials.
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