Easing population pressure

The most lucrative business in this country is said to be running a maternity home. That is perhaps why official estimates of population growth rate and fertility rates are greatly doubted. Unofficial rates of the two are estimated at 2.4% and 4.5 per woman respectively.

Not that we should stop setting up more maternity homes. In fact, considering the apathetic state of mother and child care in this country, we do need more and more maternity homes, especially in the rural Pakistan. Of course, not for bringing in more mouths to feed and clothe but to take good care of post-natal health of the mother and child. And also to save the new born from polio and the mother from becoming a child-bearing machine by providing her the right counsel for spacing and limiting.

The Population Council of Pakistan has estimated that only 35.4% of women in the country are currently practising contraception and that more than 20% of married women want to practise contraception to space out birth or limit their family size but are unable to do so. This is mainly because of widespread illiteracy, cultural taboos and inaccessibility to high quality family planning or birth spacing services.

Also, there appears to be some kind of aversion on the part of successive governments since General Zia’s days towards population planning. This needs to be reversed, with the current government and its successors making a commitment to treat this matter as number one priority of the nation, following up with putting in place a strong family planning programme and increasing contraceptive prevalence rates.

Due consideration should also be given to the sensible suggestion that the population planning department should be merged with the health ministry. All private maternity homes and clinics, as well as all big private hospitals, should set up a population planning unit on their premises.

A Federal Task Force (FTF) has been established to promote public private partnership among all stakeholders in population-related activities and encourage corporate social responsibility projects by the corporate sector.

The report of the task force constituted earlier by the Supreme Court and submitted on October 30, 2018 had stated that Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world. According to rough estimates, Pakistan’s population will be doubled in the next 30 years. We therefore, urgently need to reduce the growth rate to 1.5% and fertility rate to around 3%.

Rapidly growing population has direct negative implications for adverse climate change, environment degradation, deforestation and above all the decline in water availability per capita. It will exacerbate food security and threaten the country’s sustainable development prospects. As a consequence of faster growth rate currently, the very fabric of our society is facing a serious threat with the writ of the state seemingly vanishing rapidly.

The report recommended establishing national and provincial task forces to provide oversights and take critical decisions to reduce population growth, lower fertility rate and increase contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR). The report also recommended mandating all public health facilities are to deliver family planning services as part of the essential service package, all general registered private sector practitioners and hospitals to provide family planning counselling, information and services to male and female clients. It also proposed providing training to lady health workers to provide family planning, ante-natal and post-natal counselling, and contraception services on priority basis.

The federal government has been directed to create a five-year non-lapsable special fund for reducing population growth rate. The fund is to be set up exclusively from federal resources without any cut from provincial funds.

Right to promote primary healthcare for mother and child has been made mandatory as the right to education given in Article 25-A of Constitution.

Mass movement leading to a call of action is to be launched involving political leaders, corporate sector, academia, judiciary, executive, Ulema, media, intelligentsia, civil society and youth.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2020.

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