Maternal and infant mortality rate in KP termed alarmingly high

Awareness stressed for effective family planning

PESHAWAR: Maternal and infant mortality rate in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is alarmingly high and there is a greater need to create awareness among the masses to have effective planning about families and overcome the issue.

Through effective planning not only the huge maternal and infant mortalities could be controlled but also a number of issues pertaining to mothers and newborns health can be done away with, said speakers at a consultative meeting arranged by Population Council, a non-governmental organization, here on Monday.

“In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 206 of every 100,000 mothers die due to pregnancy-related complications. The infant mortality rate is also alarmingly high. As many as 58 neonates of every 1000 live-births lose the battle for life in its very beginning,” said Seemeen Ashfaq, director communication of the Population Council, in her introductory remarks.

The meeting was attended by representatives from print and electronic media. A former senator, Javed Jabbar, and chairman of the Department of Journalism, University of Peshawar, Dr Altafullah, also spoke on the occasion.

Javed Jabbar wanted the mediapersons to consider the population explosion and family planning as a priority area. Pointing out the lack of presence of the woman reporters at the event at the very outset of his talk, he gave a strong message to the organisers that a good number of women were working in the media in Peshawar, which is erroneously referred to as a conservative society. He said they must have been invited to the event being a very important stakeholder of the issue.

Javed Jabbar said the media could play a vital role in creating awareness among the masses about the family planning. He believed people were ready to plan families but the rulers were unable to adopt the right policies and provide facilities to them.

He said that every 10th couple was waiting for adopting contraceptives but they could not do so in the absence of family planning facilities where they could be provided necessary guidance and means.

Javed Jabbar said there were only 3,000 family planning centres in the country which were insufficient to guide such a huge population. He said no plan was in sight to make effective use of the 19,000 public sector health units in the country for family planning besides providing healthcare to the people.

Seemeen Ashfaq said Pakistan ranked 6th in population globally with annual growth rate 1.9 percent. She said 26 percent couples wanted birth space but they had no access to contraceptives.

“The frequent pregnancies also cause anemia to mothers and the people were yet to adopt the contraceptive methods due to lack of accessibility to family planning despite demand from the people,” she said.

Dr Altafullah was of the opinion that due to a heavy workload it may not be possible for the journalists to focus sufficient attention on each and every issue. But they can better develop the spot stories and give detailed information in the routine stories, he added.