Population becomes an ‘emergency’ as National Population Summit nears

Islamabad
Over 500 delegates from Pakistan and 30 international experts will converge at Jinnah Convention Centre here for a two-day National Population Summit 2015 where Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the four chief ministers are expected to not only articulate a national consensus statement on population and development, but also go a step further and underscore the provinces’ commitment, both of funding and high-level resolve for achieving FP2020 goals and other developmental objectives.
The summit, which is being organised by the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms and the Population Council, supported by UNFPA, Packard Foundation and Gates Foundation, will reflect multiparty consensus on the burning issue of population; it will be an opportunity to re-pledge for FP2020 goals at the national level, as a composite of the provincial FP2020 goals, and to arrive at a national consensus statement. It will also bring forward the religious leadership’s final endorsement of how Pakistan has to accelerate its birth spacing and family planning efforts.
Sharing the details of the summit with the media here on Monday, Minister of State for Health Saira Afzal underlined the need to change the narrative of population planning and to view it in the context of health, given that high fertility and unbridled population growth is having a harmful impact on individual health and societal wellbeing in general and maternal and child health in particular.
Declaring population as an emergency, Saira conceded that the critical issue of population explosion in Pakistan has not been accorded the kind of attention that it merited. “It will now be an emergency, like any other disease,” she stated.
Saira maintained that a strong policy statement from the country’s political and religious leadership would make up for lost time. It is for this reason that the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination and Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms and the Population Council, supported by UNFPA, Packard Foundation and Gates Foundation, are organising the Population Summit from November 5-6, 2015 in Islamabad.
Saira stated that even though population is a devolved subject, the federal government still owns the responsibility to coordinate with the provinces and to provide an interface to international partners. The minister of state was flanked at the briefing by Senator Javed Jabbar, who led a broad-based consultation process involving 32 religious scholars; all of them have not only come out unequivocally in support of birth spacing as a means to regulate fertility but have also stressed upon the need to give due attention to providing proper care, attention, nutrition and education to girls. Their position is that, according to the Holy Quran, the foundation of a harmonious family is laid upon love and care and the Quran enshrine the rights of mothers, children and the families. Therefore, the imposition of any hardship that could jeopardise the health and wellbeing of any member of the family is contrary to the principles of Islam.
Javed Jabbar reflected on the alarmingly high unmet need for contraceptives in Pakistan. He pointed out that there are only 3.500 population planning centres in Pakistan as against 19,000 health centres, and emphasised the need to correct this disparity so that couples have access to required services.
Pakistan’s population issues loom large in terms of the balance of 188 million with limited resources and rapid growth eroding development gains. Increasingly, there is recognition that a slower pace of population growth would have huge development benefits, especially in terms of the environment, maternal and child health and in poverty reduction.
A key reason why Pakistan is lagging behind most regional and Muslim countries in terms of completing its demographic transition and improving its reproductive health and other MDGs has been wavering political commitment and unsustained support by successive governments. Unlike Bangladesh, a model success story, population has never been declared a national priority, informs a brief shared by The Population Council.
The summit offers a new opportunity to highlight and incorporate population issues into the Vision 2025. There is a chance to further utilize the newly evolving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have been signed by the Prime Minister of Pakistan in September 2015, and to bring about alignment with population and health and growth strategies in the provinces. The executive director of The Population Council, Dr. Zeba Sathar, and Director General Health Dr. Assad Hafeez were also present on the occasion.