KARACHI, Jan 24: Speakers at a meeting on Thursday said that unless the government and nongovernmental organisations joined hands, the explosive population growth in the country could not be checked effectively.

They were speaking at the meeting organised by the Family Planning Association of Pakistan on the occasion of a visit of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Population Welfare Minister, Sardar Mohammad Yaqoob, at the FPAP hospital.

The minister, who was briefed on the FPAP working, urged the NGO to send its technical experts so that they could help guide his departmental officials regarding the future strategy in the field of population planning.

Earlier, other speakers talked in detail about the NGO which was the pioneer in the field of family planning and had started the operations nearly half a century back — a decade before the government started its operation in this field in the mid 60s.

They said that Pakistan with its population growth rate of 2.1 per cent a year was at the top of the list of other countries in the region, with China having a growth rate of 0.8 per cent; India 1.6 per cent; Sri Lanka 1 per cent; and Iran 1.4 per cent.

They said even in many Islamic countries the growth rate was lower than that of Pakistan, like in Egypt and Malaysia where it was 2 per cent each; Morocco had 1.7 per cent, Turkey had 1.4 per cent and Indonesia had 1.3 per cent.

Giving a comparison of contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) in Pakistan with other Islamic countries, they said that Pakistan with 30 per cent CPR was at the bottom of the list which was topped by Iran that had 73 per cent; Turkey had 64 per cent; Morocco 59 per cent; Egypt had 55 per cent; Bangladesh had 49 per cent and Malaysia had 48 per cent.

They said that with efforts made by the government and the NGOs the population growth rate which was at the peak with 3.2 in 1984 had been declining and it became 2.5 in 1995, and 2.4 in 1998. They said that efforts were being made to further bring it down to 1.7 per cent by 2010 and to 2.1 per cent by 2050.

They said that the fertility rate — number of children that a woman on an average had during her reproductive age — in the country had also declined with passage of time. It was 7.1 in 1965, and came down to 6 in 1984, then to 5.6 in 1995, and it was 5 in 1998. Efforts were being made to bring it down to 3.2 by 2010 and further down to 2 by the year 2050.

They said that if the present trend did not change the population that at present was around 140 million would be around 296 million by the year 2050.

They said that over 3.1 million people were annually added to the country’s population, that was almost equal to the population of Albania and New Zealand.

They said that due to poor medical facilities available to the females, over 32,000 women died every year during pregnancy or delivery and over 375,000 suffered for life due to other pregnancy-related complications.

Giving a break down of the causes of maternal deaths, they said that 25 per cent died of severe bleeding; 19 per cent of indirect causes; 15 per cent of infections; 13 per cent of unsafe abortions; 12 per cent of hypertensive disorders; eight per cent of obstructed labour and eight per cent of other direct causes.

They said that the FPAP-working with 14 hospitals, 3,000 centre, and 1,500 strong staff comprising doctors, para medics and over 70,000 volunteers-was carrying out almost 11 per cent of the total family planning programmes in the country.

Syed Khadim Ali Shah, Noor Illahi Arain, Amin Kiyani, Sardar Abdul aziz Khan, Dr Farooq and others also spoke on the occasion.