EXCLUSIVE: How MSI, Foreign NGO is Aiding Safer Family Planning Services in North East
Marie Stope International Organisation Nigeria, MSION, has for years now, been leading in the provision of quality sexual reproductive health services across all the states of Nigeria including Borno, North East Nigeria, PRNigeria can authoritatively report.
Marie Stope International Organisation MSI
The parent body, Marie Stope International Organisation (MSI), headquartered in London, United Kingdom is part of the Marie Stopes International Global Partnership, a social enterprise which operates in more than 37 countries across the globe, providing reproductive healthcare services.
A page explaining what MSION is all about on the non-governmental organisation, NGO’s, website, stated that Marie Stopes International Organisation Nigeria (MSION) has been delivering services since opening its first clinic in 2009.
“In doing so, we became one of the few providers of short-term, long-acting and reversible voluntary family planning services, including permanent contraception in Nigeria, and through the hard work of our dedicated teams are helping to increase awareness and contraception usage across the country.
“We continue to extend the services we offer in Nigeria to increase the uptake of sexual and reproductive health services”.
Moreso, credible investigations by PRNigeria which was corroborated by MSION itself show that the international NGO has averted no fewer than 6,344 abortions, and 5,719 unsafe abortions, through the provision of family planning services for women in Borno state thus preventing unplanned pregnancies and the consequences of unsafe abortion that could result from such pregnancies .
It has also ‘helped’ to avert 15,317 unintended pregnancies through the provision of family planning services to 59,452 clients in Borno state, PRNigeria learnt. But our reporter was unable to confirm the veracity of the MSION claims.
But the international humanitarian body recently said that it reached 3.1million clients with sexual and reproductive health services in Nigeria in 2021.
Mr Jonathan Nachia, the MSION Research Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, North East, disclosed this at a one-day meeting with stakeholders from the health sector in Borno.
Nachia said that their organisation has successfully averted 15,317 unintended pregnancies; 6,344 abortions; 5,719 unsafe abortions; 79 maternal deaths, and 4,581 mortality and morbidity, among others in Borno state.
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The revelation of MSION on the number of abortions it has averted through its family planning service provision is coming on the heels of a Reuters story indicting the Nigerian military of carrying out forceful abortions on Boko Haram terrorists’ wives in the North East, while also killing their young children.
But an investigation by PRNigeria last week revealed that health personnel at the Giwa Barracks detention Centre in Borno State have been helping pregnant wives of detained Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists to deliver their child successfully, as part of showing love to humanity.
The detention facility has also been providing the children of their detainees the necessary care for their physical growth.
A PRNigeria reporter who visited the Borno barracks recently observed that the detention centre prioritizes giving necessary ante-natal support to pregnant Boko Haram fighters’ wives brought to the facility.
The health facility at the barracks has successfully handled the childbirth of two women, and thereafter provided their babies with necessary feeding and clothing provisions, in recent times.
One of the wives of a Boko Haram suspect who is still at large, Aisha Ibrahim, gave birth to her seven-month-old son, Moammadu in May. But it was not at the detention facility she conceived the tot. Moammadu’s pregnancy was about six-month-old when his mother was captured, and brought to the Joint Investigation Centre, JIC, at the Giwa barracks.
The 31-year-old noted that she was scared about her pregnancy and the fate of her unborn baby when she joined the women already in the military centre, late last year.
“But to my surprise, the military officers who are guarding us took care of me and another woman who was also pregnant, at that time.
“They gave us routine drugs and consistently monitored our situations, prior to our delivery. They were also there for us when we were ready to put to bed.
“It was the females among the soldiers here (at the JIC detention centre) that handled our childbirth, together with some private healthcare officials at the clinic in this our barracks.
Corroborating what little Moammadu’s mother initially asserted, Yanna Madu Kawu, another female who has been held at the barrack since 2017 with her husband (a repentant terrorist) said the staff at their detention home always provide necessary support and care for the pregnant wives of arrested terrorists.
Since her arrival five years ago, Kawu, who hails from Konduga Local Government Area of the State, told PRNigeria that the military health officials at the barracks have assisted three pregnant women brought to their centre, to deliver successfully.
The 20-year-old, who already has a daughter, said: “They don’t show stigma to wives and daughters of the terrorists arrested and brought here. They even support the pregnant ones among us, not showing concern about the fact that some fathers of the unborn children are Boko Haram fighters.
“Immediately any pregnant woman affiliated to Boko Haram is arrested and brought here, they will enrol her for ante-natal. To the best of my knowledge, they have never advised any expectant woman to terminate her pregnancy, regardless of how their pregnancy was gotten”.
By PRNigeria
