World Population Day Today

Decrease in use of contraceptives a threat to population control

Says health minister

10 July 2010, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

High rates of unmet need for family planning is posing a threat to population control, said Health and Family Welfare Minister Prof AFM Ruhal Haque said yesterday. The unmet need for family planning, which means the couple who want to use contraceptives but could not, is still 17.6 percent, the minister said. He said this while he was speaking at a press briefing at the health ministry conference room prior to the World Population Day. The minister said it was 11.3 percent in 2004. It means the unmet need has increased more than 6 percent in last few years for lack of awareness, which must be addressed properly. As elsewhere across the globe Bangladesh observes the World Population Day today with the slogan 'Everyone Counts.' The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken different programmes to mark the day including rally, discussion, film exhibition, special health service, painting exhibition, distribution of family planning media award 2010 and special programmes on media. Prof Ruhal highlighted the country's population scenario, challenges of population control and the government's steps to address the issue. " Every year some 20 lakh new faces have been added to our population. The number of population has been increasing as the infant mortality rate has decreased for years together and the average life expectancy has increased. Much could be done if we could address the unmet need of the married couple," he said, admitting that shortage of family planning workers has been hindering the programme. A field level family planning worker was to recruit during the 70s to educate and provide contraceptives to 600 couple. But family planning workers were not recruited accordingly during the previous years though the number of population had increased and the programme has slowed down, said the health and family planning officials. They said a family worker is to cover nearly 2000 couple currently, which is quite difficult for them. Prof Ruhal said recruitment for the directorate general of family planning will begin soon. Terming dropout rate of using contraceptive a big challenge, the Director General of Family Planning Abdul Quaiyum said it is 40 percent. The authorities are hopeful as the use of contraceptives by males has increased to 15 percent from 0.7 percent for continuous awareness programme. Furthermore, satellite clinic at each upazila, reforms in district committees and population council, establishment of community clinics and increased number of skilled birth attendants will play an important role in population control, they said. State Minister Captain (Retd) Majibur Rahman Fakir, Secretary Shaikh Altaf Ali, Director General of Health Services Prof Shah Monir Hossain and Director (IEM) of Family Planning Ganesh Chandra Sarker were present at the breifing.