About Lafiya Nigeria
‘Saving lives through family planning’ by enabling access to safe family planning options in northern Nigeria. Through:
- Using a cost-effective and community-based distribution model, Lafiya provides access to contraception & information about family planning.
- Purchasing & distributing innovative, self-injectable contraceptives ‘Sayana Press’ (DMPA-SC), for free.
- Covers three months per injection.
- Distributes 500,000 doses so far.
Reasons to act:
Family planning is one of the most effective and well-tested strategies for saving women’s lives and bringing back control over their reproductive choices.
- 24% of Nigerian women want contraception but have no access
- 40.000 Nigerian women a year die from pregnancy-related issues
- 3M unintended pregnancies per year, in Nigeria
- Contraception is a human right (UN)
- Urgency for maternal health
- Socioeconomic opportunities
Lafiya addresses the following challenges:
- Frequent stock issues: in 2022 stockout rates over 50%.
- Lack of trained personnel: there are fewer than 2 health workers per 1000 people.
- Misconceptions: women fear infertility and long-term side effects -> myths
How?
- Recruiting and upskilling female health workers (Lafiya sisters)
- Procuring & transporting DMPA-SC (Sayana Press)
- Identifying and reaching out to rural women with unmet needs regarding family planning (by Lafiya sisters)
- Providing family planning counselling and free contraception (by Lafiya sisters)
- This approach is Trust-building, cost-effective and scalable
- On the ground research
- Field studies
- Stakeholder engagement, including state governments & health advisors
Collaborations with GHH-partners
- Erasmus University (both Erasmus UMC and ESHPM): research collaboration to improve access to contraception. Positive Impact Society Erasmus (PISE) published project update on research.
- PharmAccess: a specialist partner for Lafiya’s UK health program
Overview of characteristics
Active in countries:
Nigeria
Community of Practice (CoP):
CoP1: Strengthening Health Systems
Themes and subthemes within CoP:
- Health Workforce strengthening: Lafiya Nigeria trains and supports community health entrepreneurs and -workers.
- Health System governance & service delivery: Lafiya Nigeria works through partnerships with state ministries of health and local supply chains to strengthen service delivery systems.
Organization type:
NGO
Available resources:
- Knowledge & expertise: implementation knowledge in community health entrepreneurship, task-shifting and self-care interventions (through Lafiya Sisters model)
- Networks: Lafiya Nigeria is embedded in local government systems & community-based health provider networks across Nigeria.
- Influence / agenda setting: contributes evidence to global discussions on self-care, women’s health & local entrepreneurship.
- Financial access/funding access: receives philanthropic and Effective Altruism community funding (CE Incubation Grant; EA Fund Support).
- Coordination & platform capacity: Operates structured training and supervision systems for Lafiya Sisters. Manages digital data collection and monitoring for local interventions.