KARACHI: Speakers at a seminar held on Thursday, organised in connection with World Health Day, expressed concern over Pakistan’s population growth rate, which they said was higher than the average growth rate of South Asian countries.

Such a rapid growth in population, experts maintained, poses serious threats to the country’s social progress, economic stability, health, environment, law and order, and food security.

The programme was organised by the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), Pathfinder International and Medical and Social Welfare Committee of the Arts Council of Pakistan (ACP) Karachi at the PMA House with the theme “Planning family for healthy and quality family life”

Secretary General PMA centre, Dr Mirza Ali Azhar, said the World Health Organisation selected a priority area of global public health concern as the theme for World Health Day 2015 — food safety. This is of high relevance to all people on the planet, and multiple stakeholders, including governments, civil society, the private sector, and intergovernmental agencies.

Consultant gynaecologist Dr Nighat Shah said family planning activities were started in Pakistan on a limited scale in the first five-year national development plan (1955-60) through voluntary organisations, however, in the second five-year plan (1960-65) family planning services were dispensed through the health infrastructure.

She added that family planning gained priority in the subsequent five-year plan when an independent setup was established for managing and executing the population welfare programme and institutional arrangements for the programme attained the status of an independent ministry in 1990.

She said in a Cairo moot in 1994, Pakistan resolved to attain certain targets relating to family planning by 2010, which included protection of women from unwanted pregnancies, saving children’s lives, helping men care for their families, improving family well-being, advancing national development and preserving natural resources. For this end, 100,000 lady health workers were trained for primary healthcare.

But, the situation remained grim. The fertility levels in Pakistan were still quite alarming comparing to other countries in the region like India, Bangladesh and Iran.

She said contraception prevalence in the country was just 35.4 per cent, which was still much lower than the desired goal.

“Pakistani women have about one child more than their desired number, implying that the current total fertility rate (TFR) is 31pc higher than it would be if all the unwanted pregnancies were avoided,” said Dr Shah.

The audience was informed that 70.4pc married women employed no method of contraceptive, while in the remaining women 8.2pc used female sterilisation, 7.9pc traditional methods, 6.8pc condom, 2.3pc injectables, 2.3pc intrauterine devices (IUDs), 2.1pc pills and 0.2pc other modern methods.

Pakistan still has an alarming 276/100,000 maternal mortality rate and the tragedy included mothers and mostly unborn children, participants were informed.

Pathfinder representative Dr S. Siddiqui, gyneecologist Prof Sadia Ahsan Pal, public health specialist Dr Sikander Sohani and ACP medical committee’s head, Dr Qaiser Sajjad spoke on various aspects of the theme.

They said the realisation of the right to healthy and quality family life was intrinsically linked to the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights (SRR) of women and girls. Protection of quality health of an infant was the parent’s responsibility.

Experts said those links could clearly be shown by looking at two outcomes of human rights violations — child marriage and adolescent pregnancies, which were still prevalent across Pakistan.

They said early and child marriage and adolescent pregnancies deprived young girls of education and employment opportunities, leaving them in poor bargaining positions and excluding them from critical decision making. These in turn increase their chances of a risky pregnancy and childbirth, including infant and maternal morbidity and mortality.

They said pregnant young women had to compete with the nutritional demands of bearing a child — a double burden on their own development, as well as the development of the child growing inside them. They are often stunted as a result of under-nutrition, and in turn bore undernourished children.

The audience was informed that in Bangladesh, a family planning and maternal and child health (FPMCH) programme was introduced in 1977. The programme’s evaluations and outcomes had shown that family planning was strongly associated with women’s health improvements and their economic productivity outside of their household as well as their household assets. The results show that adoption and continuation of family planning not only improve mortality and morbidity of mothers and children but also improved health and quality of family life.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2015

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