November 25, 2007	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 14, 1428

KARACHI, Nov 24: Caretaker Minister for Population Welfare and Women Development, Sindh, Nadira Panjwani said on Saturday that government wanted more interaction with religious scholars and leaders on its family planning programmes for the province.

Talking to Dawn after the concluding session of a two-day workshop on “Revised Manual of Contraceptive Logistic” organised by her department in collaboration with the United Nations Development Fund, Ms Panjwani said religious leaders could play a significant role in persuading people to adopt methods of family planning and promoting use of contraceptives thus helping the government control population growth.

She noted that a number of clerics had already been contributing to government’s efforts towards removing misconceptions regarding family planning, but stressed that there was a need for reinvigorating that role to achieve the desired results.

Responding to a question, she said measures should be taken to keep the prices of contraceptives as low as possible. According to her, contraceptives or any other reproductive health services can make a remarkable difference only when they are easily available to every family and affordable to low-income group.

Earlier, speaking as chief guest at the workshop, the minister cited the world population data sheet 2007 prepared by the US-based Population Reference Bureau, which suggested that with a population of 169.3 million in mid-2007, Pakistan had the sixth largest population in the world after China, India, the US, Indonesia and Brazil. The existing birth rate has been put at 31 per thousand as against the death rate of eight per thousand, with the natural increase being at 2.3.

Director General (Monitoring and Statistics), Ministry of Population Welfare, Islamabad, Shahzad Ahmad highlighted the importance of the contraceptives supply system, saying that without ensuring availability of the products everywhere in the country, the family planning services could not work effectively.

He attributed a decline in contraceptives and service availability in the country from 33 per cent in recent years to the present 30 per cent to a considerable shortage of relevant manpower, including service providers. “Male immobilisers are not available in all union councils and, as such, the motivation for use of contraceptives and adoption of better reproductive health methods remained far behind the targets,” he added.

Mr Ahmad said that contraceptives were being supplied under the Population Welfare Programme through a system which was formally compiled as a manual in 1987.