PESHAWAR: Women’s role urged in efforts to cut population growth rate
Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, June 3: Experts have urged the government to concentrate on women while framing policies to bring down the rate of population growth in the country.
”Females make up half of the country’s population but they have been ignored in the family planning campaign; this has been hindering efforts aimed at overcoming the problem,” said Dr Muzafar Tareen, while delivering a lecture on population control at a hotel here on Sunday.
The event was organised by a multinational pharmaceutical company to spread awareness among health professionals with regards to population control.
Dr Tareen said that women need to be educated on matters related to reproductive health as they had been neglected in the population control campaign by the government as well international donor agencies in the past.
“It is high time that we realise where the fault lies, because our population planning efforts have been a total failure right from the first day,” he said, adding that participation of women in the family planning campaign had yielded positive results in developed countries.
Women, especially in the Fata and rural parts of the NWFP, do not have the privilege to decide about the birth of their children due to certain social, religious, psychological and cultural taboos, Dr Tareen observed. These taboos, he added, could be removed only by imparting health education to women.
He said that in many areas of the country, women were not allowed access to hospitals and other health facilities, as a result of which the population had been rising at an alarming rate.
Billions of dollars were being spent every year to control the population, but all that money and effort was going down the drain, mainly because of not including women in population planning efforts, he claimed.
This had also caused an increase in venereal diseases, including HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, he added. NGOs do not want to take realistic steps to overcome the problem as it would freeze their funding from abroad, Dr Tareen opined.
He added that traditional methods to control population had failed and it was time that modern and scientific approaches were adopted to cope with the situation.
Low-priced water-based lubricants, the ingredients of which contain germicide, anti-viral, anti-bacterial and spermicides to protect women against a host of venereal diseases and pregnancy should be employed. The multi-purpose lubricants, which were being successfully used in developed countries for several decades, have no side-affects, he said.
“Women should be educated about vas deference, sterilisation, oral contraceptives, female diaphragm and intra uterus devices (IUDs) to control population,” he said.
He said that the population control departments and donor agencies should run the campaign keeping in view the local cultural, religious and psychological factors in mind.
