Ligation gains wider acceptance in Olango Island

For most ordinary housewives in Olango Island, ligation became the most acceptable Family Planning method.  Some seven women interviewed said that they wanted to limit the number of children within their capacity to feed and to provide other basic needs such as clothing and education for their children.

Ligation proves to be effective for them.  Unlike any other FP methods which most of them have tried, ligation caused no side effects.  “I have tried IUD for one year but it was so uncomfortable especially during menstruation that it would loosen up which eventually caused heavy bleeding,” disclosed Mirla Dano. 

Dano, 27 years old has three children.  She decided to submit herself to ligation ten months after giving birth to her youngest child on August 2004.  She realized that with fishing as the only way of living for their family, life was so hard for them.  Moreover, the burden of raising and rearing children was not easy for her either.  “I wanted to help my husband earn a living but if I continue to get pregnant, I could not even have time for myself,” she confessed. More>>>>

FP Chat Sessions Reaches a Higher Level in Barangay Luz

When Public Health Midwife Vilma “Leah” Adaro made forward plans for the conduct of chat sessions in their barangay last year, she wasn’t expecting a huge crowd to turn up at the event.

“We had planned to conduct FP chat sessions with eight to ten persons only, but it turns out that there are twenty or more persons that participated in every chat sessions that we made,” Ms. Adaro said. “We generate a lot of interest from these people, it seems they really have these deep concerns to limit or space their children and they just don’t know how to do it,” Ms. Adaro said. Not all questions or concerns though were answered during the sessions, especially with a big crowd bursting with curiosity.

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Olango Women Need More Ligation Service Providers

More and more women are lining up to be ligated in Olango Island. In a tiny island located off the coast of Lapu-lapuCity where an average family size includes having five to six children, bilateral tubal ligation (BTL) is much preferred. In the case of Judith Amorin, waiting for several months to be ligated proved to be a mistake. By January of this year, she is already pregnant with her seventh child because the scheduled Marie Stopes Clinic BTL operation set by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) last November 2005 was postponed.

But due to very limited schedules available for these free medical operations, most of the women who enlisted to avail of the services got pregnant. Majority of them could not resort to a service for a fee because they lack the money.

The Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) is one of the non-government organizations undertaking social development projects in OlangoIsland. One of these is the advocacy for the increase of acceptance of modern FP methods among Olango residents. PBSP is not directly giving FP services to the people in the island but they primarily organize service providers like Marie Stopes to perform free BTL operation in the areas. More>>>>

Awareness on vasectomy increases among Cebu communities

Vasectomy with only .01 percent acceptance nationwide and .03 percent acceptance in the region, the method is now gaining popularity in some communities of Metro Cebu.  A group of vasectomized men dubbed as the “Bisayang Maginoo Club” (BMC) is persistently advocating vasectomy to promote Responsible Parenthood in their respective communities and neighboring barangays. 

Among all methods, vasectomy was given the least focus in the previous years.  And we want to advocate for male involvement and shared responsibility in Family Planning,” Dr. Saleshe Baking, founder and president of Nagpakabana Foundation said. “Now, it is starting to compete with other methods in terms of awareness and acceptance because of the efforts done by the BMC members,” she adds.  More>>>>