Post-Pregnancy Family Planning

The Post-Pregnancy Family Planning project is supporting the Lagos state government to increase use of modern contraceptives by women within the post pregnancy period. The post-pregnancy period is defined as pregnancy through one-year post-pregnancy and includes miscarriages and any pregnancy that does not result in a live birth. The project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates and MSD for Mothers. The project targets women who receive prenatal care and deliver their babies in private health facilities.

In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city with more than 23 million residents, most women give birth in one of the thousands of private health facilities that thrive in the city. But few of these clinics offer any family planning services. Many women with infants are at risk of getting pregnant with their next child before they are ready. Through a combination of strategies, the project has increased the number of women who choose to adopt modern contraception after giving birth. The project’s key interventions include increasing demand for family planning and helping to provide those services, using data to monitor progress and help improve programming.

By the end of 2020, the project had:

• Trained 956 providers on long-acting reversible contraceptive methods (LARCs) such as IUDs and injections
• Engaged a total of 236 private health facilities within Lagos state
• Ensured the 236 facilities didn’t run out of family planning commodities such as condoms, LARCs and other necessities
• Supported more than 7,500 social mobilization activities during prenatal visits, immunization clinics, and community interventions
• Reached nearly 110,000 post-pregnancy women with comprehensive family planning messages. More than 34,000 of them ultimately visited the clinic, with 12,200 adopting modern family planning