EA - Introducing Lafiya Nigeria by Klau Chmielowska

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Introducing Lafiya Nigeria, published by Klau Chmielowska on January 17, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Reducing maternal mortality through informed family planningIn June 2021, we founded Lafiya Nigeria, a non-profit organisation that works toward ending maternal mortality in Nigeria by widening the access and information about family planning. TL; DR Introduction to our organisation in a 3-min videoThis post describes (I) the challenge we aim to solve, (II) our approach, (III), our traction, (IV) our value-add, (V) our plans, (VI) how you can get involved in our initative.(I) The challengeIn low and middle-income countries, women are dying from giving life. Nearly 300,000 women and girls are dying from pregnancy-related complications each year, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Other health complications such as obstetric fistula, postpartum anemia, and postnatal depression are also key health burdens borne by pregnant women.Reducing the number of unintended pregnancies is an effective means of reducing health burdens for mothers and newborns. Despite a significant number of women in these countries wanting to avoid pregnancy, many are not using modern contraceptives, resulting in 85 million unintended pregnancies per year. If all women with unmet need were provided access to and used modern contraceptives, the Lancet estimated that maternal deaths globally would drop 44%. An estimated 70,000 maternal deaths could be prevented each year, with 441,000 new-born deaths also averted. Additionally, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that every dollar spent on contraceptive services beyond the current level would reduce the cost of pregnancy-related and newborn care by three dollars. The Copenhagen Consensus also found that every dollar spent on access to modern contraception leads to 120 dollars of social, economic, and environmental benefits.Access to family planning is beyond a health issue: its dividends are seen also in positive effects on education, income generation, and children's welfare. A study in Indonesia found that providing access to family planning was three times more effective than improving school quality in keeping girls in school an extra year. Research in Colombia found that girls with access to family planning clinics were 7% more likely to participate in the formal workforce as adults. Long-term studies have also shown that providing access to family planning programs can lead to improved college completion rates of children and higher family incomes decades later. These spillover effects are difficult to measure and are often neglected in traditional cost-effectiveness analyses.In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of modern contraceptives in countries like Nigeria but there has also been an increase in the unmet need. From 2012 to 2019, the portion of women using contraceptives in Nigeria rose from 11.2% to 14.2%, while the unmet need also rose from 22.4% to 23.7%. These figures are greatly exaggeratedFocus: NigeriaLafiya Nigeria focuses on rural and underserved regions of northern NigeriaNigeria has >45M women of child-bearing age, and 65% have unmet contraceptive needs (IHME), resulting in around 40,000 maternal deaths a year.In Nigeria, over 83% of women had not used any contraceptive methods for family prevention in 2018. This rate reached 96% among women without any education. This staggering gap in health provision results in maternal and infant deaths. In Nigeria, over 40,000 women die each year from pregnancy-related issues. The loss of life does end with mother, either. Over one million children under the age of five also die as a result of losing their mothers to pregnancy delivery complications.In our pilot region, Jigawa, more than 98% of women have no prior contraceptive use due to stockouts ...