Population Council Research that makes a difference

Overview

The Population Council’s involvement in Nigeria began in the 1960s when it collaborated with the Ministry of Health to implement a safe motherhood project in Calabar, a region in southeastern Nigeria. From then until 2005, the Council undertook occasional operations research projects in Nigeria that were managed from New York, Nairobi, or the Council's regional office in Accra. In 2006, the Council established a Nigeria country office in Abuja charged with carrying out a four-year cooperative agreement with USAID (funded under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) to develop the capacity of local institutions to undertake HIV prevention programs among vulnerable youth in northern Nigeria.

Program focus

The Population Council’s program in Nigeria aims to address the maternal and reproductive health needs of vulnerable populations, provide programming targeted at HIV/AIDs prevention, and empower local NGOs to better address health, education, and quality-of-life issues in their communities. The program currently focuses on the northern regions of Nigeria, where communities tend to be destitute and isolated from services.

In the past, Council work in Nigeria focused on operations research in reproductive health and family planning. This work included testing interventions to reduce maternal mortality, assessing the prevalence of unsafe abortion, training researchers to conduct situation analyses, and testing interventions to promote dual-protection practices among women and their male partners. Since 2006, the Council has focused heavily on prevention of HIV transmission among vulnerable young people in northern Nigeria, as it implements activities supported through its four-year partnership with USAID. These activities aim to strengthen the capacity of Nigerian organizations, including faith-based organizations, to design, manage, support, monitor, and expand HIV-transmission-prevention activities for young people. Emphasis is placed on addressing the particular vulnerabilities of married adolescent girls, taking into account cultural contexts. Over the next five years, Council staff will also undertake intervention research to reduce HIV transmission and maternal morbidity and mortality, especially among first-time mothers.

Highlights of past and present work

• Procuring and distributing magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) in health-care facilities, and training health-care providers on its use in the prevention and management of eclampsia and pre-eclampsia (major contributors to maternal deaths in Nigeria).
• Establishing a network of Safe Space Youth Clubs for vulnerable girls in northern Nigeria to promote social networking, knowledge transfer, and skills acquisition in a socially, religiously, and culturally acceptable context.
• Conducting workshops to train community advocates to provide HIV/AIDS-prevention information to pre- and postmarital adolescent girls and key community stakeholders, including religious and community leaders, politicians, heads of households, mothers-in-law, and husbands of married adolescents.
• Training community advocates linking young girls with HIV counseling and testing, STI screening, premarital religious/spiritual counseling, antenatal-clinic visits, maternal–child health clinics, testing for prevention of vertical transmission of HIV/AIDS, and antiretroviral therapy for those who are HIV-positive.
• Conducted research to highlight the potential risk factors for HIV-infection-transmission among married adolescent girls in northern Nigeria.
• Organized and conducted participatory rapid-development radio workshops that brought together stakeholders interested in protecting young girls by helping them to stay in school and delay marriage. Over a one-week period, participants developed, produced, and pretested a series of radio spots, which were aired and reinforced with a series of popular radio call-in shows. The Council hopes to continue this project and to introduce similar rapid radio-message development and dissemination activities across the country. (PDF)
• Conducted "The Days of Dialogue," a series of consultations and trainings with religious leaders and faith-based organizations that established a common platform for discussing issues of health, marriage, and education for young girls from a religious perspective.

Banner photo: © Beryl Goldberg