‘Make family planning information accessible to all’

LAHORE:Doctors, nurses, midwives and healthcare providers, in a consultation talk on reproductive health held here Friday, said that it was crucial to make family planning information and services available and accessible to all those who need it.

Basharat Naseer, who heads the midwives association in Punjab says, “We need to talk about reproductive health. We are ashamed to talk about menstruation cycle. People don’t take unmarried girls to doctor when they complain of profuse bleeding or if they do not have menses for two months at a stretch due to hormonal imbalance. They fear taking a virgin to a gynecologist will bring a bad name to the girl and say marry her off and all the complications will be taken care of. They prolong suffering that way. We need to talk about reproductive health for our own good. Until then nothing will change,” she said.

Recently, an unmarried girl near Sahiwal was killed by her brother on suspicion that she was pregnant. She had nausea in the morning and her sister-in-law said to her husband she seemed pregnant. She was not but that seemed to him reason enough to kill her. Instead of inquiring after her health and taking her to a doctor he took her life.

“Space between children comes from awareness. If we want people to practice family planning, give them knowledge so that they can take good care of themselves,” she said. A large number of women do not go to a doctor well until they are seven-month pregnant. There are others who start visiting a doctor when they are four months pregnant. “The first three months are the most important. That is when anemia needs to be addressed and a large number of women have low hemoglobin which is usually discovered when they have a check-up during pregnancy,” she added.

Shirkat Gah – Women’s Resource Centre held consultations with doctors, lady health workers, health experts and policy makers recently to increase post-pregnancy family planning services for women aged 15-24 years.

The project Naya Qadam aims to reach 100,000 women and girls with post-pregnancy family planning services by September 2020 and remove misconceptions surrounding modern family planning methods. It came up in the consultation that family planning options must be available in both urban and rural areas but they are not available in rural areas.