‘Include women’s voices in family planning’

There is a need to include women’s voices when approaching family planning, raising their family planning-related demands, identifying solutions and engaging with district managers for the resolution of those demands.

This was urged by speakers at a panel discussion on “Women Voices for Better Choices- in Family Planning Programme- Sharing the Sindh Experience” on Tuesday. The dialogue on a policy paper drafted on the experience of Costed Implementation Plan (CIP) had been organised by the Sindh Population Welfare Department in collaboration with the Forum for Safe Motherhood (FSM).

Dr Talib Lashari, the technical advisor for the Sindh Population Welfare Department, said that they conducted the project in five districts of Sindh. Dr Lashari added that the proposals included in the paper are based on an extensive literature review, as well as an in-depth analysis of family planning demands of as gathered by the forum from nearly 4,000 women in Sindh under its ‘What Women Want (WWW) campaign - which collected reproductive healthcare demands from around 250,000 women across Pakistan.

He said the paper also highlights a new approach to ‘listening sessions’ which were designed and implemented by the CIP secretariat and forum to engage women in identifying solutions for their family planning-related demands.

FSM Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Amanullah said that the input of these ‘family planning champions’ played a critical role in identifying key policy and practice changes required to address family planning demands of women.

Other FSM and planning officials from provinces said that to address the information needs of women, a 360-degree approach in deploying media, interpersonal communication through health workers, and local radio needs to be adopted.

Content, they said, should be about enabling a choice for women through information about availability, side effects, their management and the efficacy.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2020.