UNFPA to spend $40 million on reproductive health

The United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) plans to spend US $40 million over the next five years to improve reproductive health in Nigeria, which has one of the world’s worst rates of maternal and infant mortality. The 2003-2007 programme aims to reduce the large number of women who die when giving birth in this oil-rich West African country. This is currently 800 women for every 100,000 births. Nigeria also has one of the world's worst rates of infant mortality. More than 72 children out of every 1,000 born alive die before their first bithday. “Nigeria is facing very serious population and developmental challenges,”, UNFPA's representative in Nigeria, Niangoran Essan, told a seminar on Tuesday in the southern city of Asaba,Anambra State. "There is wide a prevalence of cultural and traditional practices that negatively affect the reproductive health of women and men," he added. Essan said UNFPA would contribute $25 million of its own funds to the Nigerian reproductive health programme, which would provide medical and birth control equipment and technical assistance. The remaining $15 million would come from other donors. He said curbing teenage pregnancies remained a major challenge in Nigeria, whose population of more than 120 million is growing by 2.8 percent a year. The UNFPA official said 22 percent of all Nigerian teenage girls had at least one unwanted pregnancy. Essan said the UNFPA programme would focus on the 15 worst affected of Nigeria's 36 states, but he did not name them.