Health workshop: Scaling up best practices in family planning

Speakers highlight that 40 per cent of women dying of maternal causes can be saved through family planning.

ISLAMABAD: Participants at a workshop on Monday termed lack of awareness, resources and wesk coordination between health departments as major reasons behind failure of family planning practices in Pakistan.

The workshop on “Scaling up best practices in family planning and reproductive health in Punjab” was organised here at a local hotel by the Pathfinder International (an NGO), in collaboration with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Packard Foundation. The objective of the workshop was to promote healthy timings and spacing between pregnancies, which, if put to use, will enable Pakistan to improve maternal and child health.

Speakers at the workshop expressed concern over the poor quality of family planning services in the country and their lack of awareness on the community level and among health workers. They said 40 per cent of women dying of maternal causes can be saved by spacing pregnancies and family planning. Similarly infant and child deaths can also be reduced significantly if family planning is practiced by mothers.

The speakers urged couples to space their pregnancies and advised them that after having a baby they should wait for at least two years before trying to become pregnant again. After abortion or a miscarriage, couples should wait at least six months before trying to become pregnant again, they advised.

Speaking on the occasion, Pathfinder International’s Country Director Dr Tauseef Ahmed said, “Pakistan has steadily improved family planning services over time but the progress has been limited due to absence of a holistic approach and poor use of evidence for programmatic development.”

Ahmed said it is unfortunate that Pakistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with an estimate of 227 per 100,000 live births in Punjab and 785 deaths in Balochistan. “The tragedy and the opportunity is that most of these deaths and disabilities could be prevented through known, evidenced-based best practices,” he said. Ahmed added that one in every four pregnancies in Pakistan is unwanted, which leads to 1 million abortions annually.

Speaking on the occasion, Pathfinder International’s Deputy Project Director Dr Haris Ahmed said that around 25 to 40 per cent of maternal deaths could be eliminated if unplanned and unwanted pregnancies were prevented. He said that in Pakistan, counselling for birth spacing during antenatal, postpartum and the post abortion period is uncommon.

“It is unfortunate that our health service providers are themselves ill-informed about family planning,” said Haris, “They don’t even know what type of contraceptive a woman should use if she is suffering from a disease like tuberculosis.” Besides this, he attributed the failure of family planning practices in the country due to lack of coordination between health departments.

A public health specialist from Kasur, Dr Khali Mehmood said that lack of political will and illiteracy is the major reason behind the failure of family planning practices in the country. She said that 19 posts of women medical officers are vacant in Kasur district. Health officials from Hafizabad said there were only two women medical officers available for the whole district.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th, 2011.