CAIRO. Sept 8: Ten developing countries with exceptional family planning programmes today announced formation of a new grouping to pool their experience and resources to find new ways of making what they have learned available to other nations In the South.

The countries include Bangladesh, Egypt. Indonesia, Thailand. Morocco, Zimbabwe, Colombia. Mexico, Tunisia and Kenya.

The platform, called Partners in Population and Development. was formed during the on-going International Conference on Population Development (ICPD) '94 here.

Announcing the setting up of the body. Dr. Maher Mahran. Egypt's Minister of Population and Family Welfare and

Secretary General of the country's National Population Council, said "population growth affects all of us, it affects every part of our economy, our agriculture, and the quality of life our children will have.”

Timothy Wirth. US Under Secretary and Head of US delegation to the ICPD. said his country has already pledged support to the new grouping of the 10 developing countries, an extended South-South cooperation.

Bangladesh's Health, and Family Welfare Minister Chowdhury Kamal Ibne Yusuf extended all cooperation to the Partners in Population and Development saying "we are ready to share our experiences in the family planning and the development sectors with other countries in the South."

He. however, cautioned that mere rhetoric and nd action might lead to failure of this initiative like many others taken up in the past.

"We must mean business... , because implementation part of this forum will be much more difficult." he noted.

Later talking to The Daily Star, Yusuf said- that the Bangladesh delegation played a very active role in the. process of forming the forum, though it was led by Indonesia.

The minister said Bangladesh has already proposed to house the regional headquarters of the Partners in Population and Development in Dhaka.

Organisers of the newly-formed body said that initially the body would include only 10b countries and would later In-vlive other developing nations.

Asked what really prompted these countries to form such a body they said "innovation and the need to share."

According to the organisers. innovative thinking was evident throughout the national population programmes of the 10 partner countries.

Many partner countries have made remarkable strides in irfiproving the existing health-care and family planning system. Some of them have created extra ordinary opportunities for women to improve their condition, they said,

Bangladesh, for example, provides special subsidies to promote secondary education for girls both because it is a social benefit in itself and because data worldwide show that i he more educated women are. the later they begin to have children.

Other countries like Zimbabwe in Africa has its grannies for family planning women who travel across the countryside on bicycles delivering advice and services.

Mexico has invested in developing and producing advanced new contraceptive technologies while Thailand has a programme of free vasectomies on the Kings birthday. ,

Colombia's main NGO in the family planning field — PROFAMIUA — linked up with the National Federation of Coffee Growers to provide a

choice of low cost family planning methods through 4.000 outposts in the rural areas.

Above all. the most Interesting aspect of the new group is that these countries have built their national population programmes from ground level up. commented a delegate at the Cairo Conference.

A declaration of the partner countries presented during the conference says: "For some time (our) expertise has been made available through existing programmes of South to South exchanges and collaboration, including both official and NGO activities and those supported by UNFPA'and bilateral donors."

“The time has come fpr an energised and expanded partnership to take advantage of this capacity and to link need to capacity, problems to solutions." the statement added.