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Friday March 29, 2024

‘Sindh 100pc ahead of other provinces in family planning’

By M. Waqar Bhatti
December 28, 2018

Compared to other provinces, Sindh is 100 per cent ahead in the use of family planning methods and contraceptives, as Sindh was the first province to prepare and implement a comprehensive policy to promote family planning methods, both permanent and long-acting reversible contraceptives, a seminar was told on Wednesday.

“Political will and financial resources are required to promote family planning, and despite meagre resources, Sindh prepared Costed Implementation Plan [CIP] and promoted family planning and the use of both permanent and reversible contraceptives to control the growing population,” said Dr Talib Lashari, an official of the population welfare department.

Speaking about the provision of family planning and population welfare services in the province, he claimed that the Sindh government envisaged the CIP and despite meagre resources, started implementation on family planning (FP2020), which is a global partnership for empowering women and girls by investing in rights-based family planning.

“In order to achieve the targets of FP2020, functional integration of all the partners working in the family planning and population welfare sector are being brought to one platform,” said Dr Lashari, adding that Sindh is the only province to fix the minimum age for marriage as 18 years and passed the child marriage restraint act to prevent child marriages in the province.

He said the Sindh government is the first provincial government to increase the legal age of marriage to 18 years through an act of parliament, adding that now when this legal age of marriage is being enforced, it is hoped that the rates of infant and maternal mortalities will drastically fall in the province.

The dissemination seminar on task sharing was organised by the Rahnuma-Family Planning Association of Pakistan at a hotel and it was attended by experts and representatives from governmental and non-governmental organisations working in the area of family planning.

Its chairperson Mehtab Akbar Rashdi deplored the fact that due to extreme poverty, parents are forced to sell their children like commodities. However, she said, many are still not convinced that they should adopt family planning methods and restrict the number of children so they can provide better facilities to their children.

“Due to inflation and the high cost of living, it is becoming impossible to raise a larger family, but people still don’t realise that improved quality of life with the provision of better education is not possible with a large family,” she said, claiming that even the state is not taking responsibility of children.

Commenting on promoting family planning services in the province, she said that without the support of government, NGOs cannot achieve their targets. She asked the government to understand the importance of such organisations in the implementation of goals and targets in the areas of health, family planning and population welfare.

Sindh Population Welfare Department Director General Ashfaq Ali Shah said on the occasion that the only solution of the high rates of infant and maternal mortalities in Pakistan is in promoting family planning services, adding that their department is providing contraceptives to both public and private sector organisations across the province.