KARACHI – Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world. If it continues to grow with the same pace, it will be ranked as fourth by 2030. We do not have proper family planning.
This was the upshot of a panel discussion regarding family planning at Dow University of Health Sciences on Sunday. Technical Advisor of CIP, Dr Talib Lashari, Dr Sher Shah from PMA, Dr Noreen Lalani from Aahungng youth representatives, Minhaj Qudwani, Pro Vice Chancellor Jinnah Sindh Medical College Prof Lubna Baig, Dr Ashfaq Shah from PWD, Dr Farhan, Dr Nighat Shah from Agha Khan University and Dr Nimra attended the discussion.
The participants of panel discussion emphasise upon women education and said that due to the lack of information, 35 percent of women expire during their pregnancy. Whereas, the child death rate is 10 percent which is much more than that of neighbouring countries. However, 9 percent people adopt the traditional method for family planning.
Experts further said that without proper education of family planning, it is impossible to meet the set targets. Participants highlighted the issue of early age marriages and 80 percent rate of teenage pregnancy which is no doubt one of the basic reasons of the ever-growing population. Despite of knowing the issue on government and local level, it was not paid much heed.
Experts further added that this was also one of the reasons that females don’t have the right to take decision for their family planning. Often, many people don’t even bother to plan about their family and in developing countries, the willingness to have a male child becomes yet another cause of over population.
Also, low quality services and unavailability of stock may lead towards poor family planning. Professionals said that wrong perceptions and narrow mindedness regarding the family planning may be a significant barrier to control over population. They further said that due to the increasing trend of population, 54 percent of the infants are born premature, who suffer various health issues afterwards. However, 75 percent of the population are aware of family planning among which 50 percent are females but no practical implementation is properly observed. This over population is not only results in increased poverty but also the mortality rate is much higher than the neighbouring countries i.e 276/100,000 annually. This is also hurdling in educational grounds as 25 million children are unable to go to schools.
They further said that as growing population creates problem for education and health, it also harms the country socially. To achieve the targets of family planning, there should be regular workshops and seminars for the female students of medical colleges. This will also benefit the students of other colleges as well. In this way, students will get to know the importance, benefit and advantage of it and include it in the syllabus for females.
