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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke
Senior Health Reporter
Zimbabwe has made strides on improving access to contraceptives for women which has contributed to a significant decline in unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths.
Since 2012, there has been a 42 percent jump in the number of women who had access to contraceptives in Zimbabwe from 1,5 million to 2,14 million in 2022, according to data from the Family Planning (FP2030) report. Of these, 1,8 million were married women while 350 000 were unmarried.
UNFPA reproductive health programme specialist Dr Edwin Mupeta said the increased uptake of family planning commodities was a positive for reproductive and maternal health outcomes.
“Family planning is important, particularly when tackling maternal deaths. The bulk of the women are using the pill and if you look in the past ten years or so, there has also been an increase in the women using the long acting and reversible contraceptives such as the implants. Our family planning programme in Zimbabwe is one of the strongest in the region so what is important for us to maintain is to ensure that we have enough commodities,” he said.
As a result of this increase in access to contraceptives, a total of 770 000 unintended pregnancies, 193 000 unsafe abortions and 2700 maternal deaths were averted.
Dr Mupeta said contraception was a cost effective way of preventing maternal deaths and mother to child transmission of HIV, hence it was important for the country to ensure women had access.
“This shows the impact of family planning in averting maternal deaths. Quietly, family planning does the work and is a more cost effective method. Family planning also plays a key role in preventing mother to child transmission of HIV. If a mother is not pregnant, they will not transmit HIV,” Dr Mupeta added.
He said it was good that the Government had shown commitment in making budgetary provisions for the procurement of contraceptives, as this would ensure that the country would not run out of contraceptives.
The bulk of the country’s family planning commodities have been funded by international partners for years. However, the Government recently included procurement of contraceptives in the national budget, and experts believe this will ensure constant availability.In 2022, a total of US$1,5 million was invested towards procurement of commodities while another US$1,5 million has been committed for this year.
Dr Mupeta said while Zimbabwe needed between US$7 million and US$8 million worth of contraceptives per year (excluding condoms), it was worthy to note that the investment by the Government was making an impact.
“This (investment towards contraceptives) is highly commendable but we also want to ask the Government to continue increasing the amount committed to family planning so that in the next few years we find the bulk of the contraceptives we use are purchased from domestic resources so that even if donor funding goes down, we know we have enough contraceptives to cover us,” he said.
UNFPA has been supporting the Government in the implementation of key innovations aimed at improving delivery of reproductive and maternal health services and commodities.
“One of these interventions is the rollout of the electronic logistics management system. This helps us to track that all facilities are getting commodities at the right time and in the right amounts so that there are no stock outs of critical reproductive and maternal health commodities including family planning commodities,” said Dr Mupeta.
Zimbabwe will later this month join the commemorations of World Contraceptive Day, which seeks to raise awareness on contraception to enable young people and women of reproductive age to make informed choices on their sexual and reproductive health.
Online Reporter