Three Pakistanis win family planning award

Islamabad :Three Pakistanis are among 40 of this year’s winners of the ‘120 Under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders.’ Mansoor Qaisar, Senior Information Officer at the Population Council, Laraib Abid, founder of non-profit organization Mashal, and Joshua Dilawar, project officer at non-profit Samaj Development Foundation are among some of the brightest people worldwide in the field of family planning and reproductive health.

The winners were announced Wednesday by the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

 ‘120 Under 40’ recognizes and highlights the achievements of the next generation of family planning leaders worldwide. This year’s 40 winners are advocates, researchers, service providers, epidemiologists, medical doctors, programme officers, communications and media professionals, and founders of NGOs and nonprofits. They work all over the world—in clinics and universities, in offices, and in the field—to advance family planning and reproductive health.

The 40 winners for 2017 were chosen through public online voting, scoring by a jury of experts and leaders in family planning, and the project secretariat. Each winner receives $1,000 from the Gates Institute to continue their work in family planning.

While talking to media, Mansoor Qaisar said ‘120 Under 40’ recognizes the next generation of leaders making a difference in FP and SRHR worldwide. Stressed the need for involvement of the religious community in addressing population issues, he said, “I am happy that the Population Council has developed a culturally acceptable communication strategy in Pakistan to engage religious leaders of various schools of thought, present the case for family planning, and persuade them to formally endorse birth spacing.”

Pakistan today has a population of approximately 208 million people. We are the sixth most populous country of the world and will soon will become the fifth most populous with a 2.4 percent growth rate, as indicated in the Census 2017 results.