KARACHI, Jan 19: The share of the Marie Stopes Society (MSS) in providing the total family planning and reproductive health services being extended in the country was around 12 per cent.

This was stated by the speakers at the soft inauguration of a three-storey building on Saturday built at a cost of nearly Rs20 million, provided by the US-based Packard Foundation.

The new building, besides being the administrative headquarters of the MSS, also has a resource and a training centre that the MSS plans to give to other NGOs for holding trainings and seminars.

The MSS had invited a large number of people working in the field of reproductive health and family planning to visit its facilities and see if they could join hands and benefit from them.

They said that Pakistan with a population of 142 million was the seventh most populated country in the world and its population growth rate may be doubled in the next 33 years.

They said the present population growth rate was around 2.1 per cent per annum, which was among the highest in the region, and the government and various non-governmental organisations were trying hard to bring it down to 1.9 in next three years.

They said that the MSS — which was an officiate organisation of the UK-based Marie Stopes Society International that was established in 1921 and presently was working in over 36 countries — started its operations in Pakistan around a decade back.

Over the years the MSS — with the help of its over 400 staff 40 of which were doctors — had provided its specialised services to over three million people through its 30 centres functioning in 20 cities in all the four provinces at heavily subsidised rates.

The MSS was not only providing the reproductive health facilities but was also carrying out awareness workshops with males and females and adolescents. It had also provided trainings to other service providers working in the field of reproductive health and over 40 doctors.

MSS chief Dr Mohsina Bilgrami, Farkhanda Siddiqui and others also spoke.