& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

World Population Day

The unfinished agenda

Arthur Erken
TODAY is World Population Day; a day the international community commemorates to seek worldwide attention to the issues and challenges related to population growth and distribution. It's a special day for Bangladesh, giving the size of its population (150 million people), the ongoing growth of its population (2 million people are added every year) and having the world’s highest population density (about 1,000 people per sq. km). But before we delve on these figure and it implications, let me start with a story; the true story of Rokeya.
Rokeya's mother was always complaining that there was never enough time or never enough food. It was true: her mother had to raise six children on the little that her husband — a peasant who worked on other people's land -- brought home. And, to make matters worse, as her mother used to say, her first three children were girls so they couldn’t help their father make a living. Rokeya, who was brought up in a remote rural village in Faridpur, has bitter childhood memories. She remembers the evenings when there was not enough food to go around, her mother complaining and her father sitting silently in a corner. She vividly remembers the days her mother took her to work at other people's houses to earn some extra money. At 14 years, Rokeya was married off and her mother advised her not to make the same mistake that she did by having so many children.
Rokeya had her first child quickly after she got married, but she never forgot her mother's words. When a family planning worker came to talk to her, she consented to take contraceptive pills. Subsequently, and in desperate need for work, the family moved to a ten square metres room with tin walls in a slum with no running water or sanitation, in downtown Dhaka. Her second son was born and a few months later she underwent a tubectomy. Her husband was always very supportive when it came to family planning matters. Now their children go to school and do well. The only thing Rokeya regrets is that in Dhaka she doesn't find trees nor the laidback life that she had in the village. But that doesn't concern her all that much, because she knows that, thanks to her efforts, her children are going to have a better life.
They will be educated and, God willing, she says, her daughter will be a doctor and her son a soldier! And all of this is thanks to her mother, who was able to teach her not to make the same mistakes she made.
The above case is one of many success stories of the family planning programme in Bangladesh. In the last two decades, Bangladesh has performed remarkably well in the family planning arena. Today, many married women
of child bearing age use a family planning method to control their fertility (the Contraceptive Prevalence Rate is 61%) and now on average a woman has 2.3 children during her lifetime, compared to 4.3 children in 1991 and 6.5 children in the early 1970s.
Although these figures and personal stories are very impressive by any standards, there are still a large number of couples who don't have access to family planning services, especially among impoverished communities living in urban slums or remote, hard-to-reach rural areas of this country. Some 12% of all married couples (or more than 4 million couples!) want to use family planning, but say they have no access to quality information and services. Furthermore, family planning services are also significantly lacking for the rapidly expanding adolescent population.
This is an issue that should concern us all, as most girls in Bangladesh still get married below the age of 18 years
(approximately 80%) and get pregnant while still in their teens, many of whom will experience potentially lifethreatening complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Therefore, the country's family planning programme should begin to have a more targeted approach aimed at providing family planning information and services to poor and marginalized couples living in remote rural areas and in the ever-growing urban slums.
At the same time, appropriate sexual and reproductive health information, including information related to family planning, should reach our adolescents. After all, they make up almost a quarter of the population, and many of whom will start family life in the coming years.
Also, the very low use of Arthur Erken long acting and permanent methods of family planning should be of concern, as fertility is now so low that most women have completed childbearing by their mid- to late-twenties, and women have another two decades of reproductive life to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies. Therefore, the family planning programme in Bangladesh needs to be continuously strengthened and expanded further so that there is equitable access to services for all communities and there should be an emphasis to improve the method mix by increasing the prevalence of long acting and permanent family planning methods.
Universal access to voluntary family planning services alone can reduce the unmet need and thereby minimise adolescent pregnancies, unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths. Therefore, ensuring access to voluntary family planning is one of the best contributions to empowering girls and women, and one of the most cost-effective investments a country can make in its future. By keeping young adults healthy and productive, by allowing parents to have smaller families and devote more resources to each child, and by reducing public expenditures on social services, family planning services contribute to economic growth and equity. Ensuring availability of affordable contraceptives and other essential reproductive health supplies is a vital part of overall socio-economic development planning.
So yes, Bangladesh has done remarkably well when it comes to reducing its population growth rate, and in reducing the number of children a woman has these days. But, providing universal access to quality family planning information and services to all those who want to plan their families remains the greatest unfinished agenda of Bangladesh! So, on this World Population Day, let us redouble our efforts to make family planning again our top priority.
The writer is UNFPA Representative in Bangladesh.