‘Clerics should be included in family planning efforts’

Family planning award recipient says maternal deaths linked to unhealthy spacing

ISLAMABAD: With the latest census results showing that Pakistan’s population was growing at an alarming rate of 2.4 per cent to rise to 207 million, one man believes there is a lot of work to be done to lower this rate – particularly by bringing in religious leaders into the conversation.

This was stated by Mansoor Qaisar a senior information officer with the Population Council. He is one of the three Pakistanis who has been picked for the ‘120 under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders’ award on Wednesday for promoting family planning practices in Pakistan.

Announced by the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the award also listed Lahore-based non-proft organisation Mashal founder Laraib Abid and Joshua Dilawar, a project officer at Samaj Development Foundation.

The winners were chosen through online voting, a panel of experts and leaders in family planning, and the project secretariat. Each of the winners will receive a cash prize of $1,000 from the Gates Institute to continue their family planning efforts.

Qaisar said that high rates of maternal mortality in Pakistan are attributed to the unhealthy spacing between children. However, sensitivity surrounding the issue – in terms of discussing it and pressure from families - has discouraged authorities from proactively taking up the issue and use of family planning services.

In this regard, he urged religious scholars to step up and play their role in addressing the issue of rising population.

“Before this can happen, they [religious scholars] must be mobilised and given a better understanding of reproductive health and family planning issues,” he suggested.

“Pakistan today has a population of approximately 208 million people. We are the sixth most populous country in the world and will soon become the fifth most populous country with a 2.4 per cent growth rate, as indicated in the provisional census results,” Qaiser said.

He said that the Population Council had engaged religious clerics from different schools of thought and was organising seminars and meetings to promote dialogue with them.

In 2015, a meeting had been organised with leading scholars with the aim of convincing them that the use of all family planning methods is acceptable. The meeting also supported birth-control practices that prevent maternal deaths.

To strengthen their case, Qaisar said that the Council had also gathered material and examples from other Muslim countries which have achieved tremendous improvement in the field of mother and child health such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and Bangladesh.

The efforts bore fruit with scholars unanimously agreeing that a mother has to breastfeed her infant for at least two years which automatically brings a minimum gap between pregnancies to two years between the two pregnancies.

The scholars also offered their support in promoting birth-spacing practices and termed it necessary to create a healthy and prosperous society. The religious leaders and heads of religious institutions also affirmed that Islam declares preservation and maintenance of human life as an inalienable right of all individuals and families.

“Like Indonesia, Iran and Bangladesh, Pakistan should also involve the religious community and recognise them as major stakeholders in achieving better results,” he stated.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 14^th, 2017.