Update : 2017-07-09 00:00:00

Family Planning Empowers People and Transforms Community

Dhiraj Kumar Nath

Dhiraj Kumar Nath

The World Population Day is observed round the world since 11 July 1987 when World
Population reached 5 billion (500 Crore). The World population in total has reached to
760 crore in June 2017. The world population increases by 100 millions approximately in
every 14 months and the major thrust of growth is in developing countries like ours.
According to UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs as published on 21st June
2017, global population will reach 980 crore by 2050. The present population of China is
140 crore and India 130 crore. It is estimated that Nigeria will overtake United Sates by
2050 to become the third most populous country in the world. The World Population Day
is observed mainly to address 5 major issues such as, increase the acceptance level of
family planning, ensure gender equality, reduce poverty and ensure maternal health and
establish human rights. These are broad areas on which every year UNFPA declares a
theme to concentrate and emphasises particular aspects. Whatever might be the theme,
mainly some public health and reproductive health issues are highlighted every year with
the vision to improve the capacity of human being and understanding of the better life
style with good health and build nation of healthy citizens competent to face any
eventually and transform the nation quickly into a welfare state. This years theme is
Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations. Access to safe, voluntary
family planning is a human right. It is also central to gender equality and womens
empowerment and is a key factor in reducing poverty. Yet around the world, some 225
million women who want to avoid pregnancy are not using safe and effective family
planning methods, for reasons ranging from lack of access to information or services for
lack of support from their partners or communities. Most of these women with an unmet
demand for contraceptives live in 69 of the poorest countries. Investments in making
family planning available also yield economic and other gains that can propel
development forward. This years World Population Day, 11 July, coincides with the
Family Planning Summit, the second meeting of the FP 2020Family Planning 2020
initiative, which aims to expand access to voluntary family planning to 120 million
additional women by 2020. To be more specific and precise, world population day is
observed to protect and empower youth of genders boys and girls. It is to offer them
knowledge about sexuality and benefit of delay in marriage. This is to educate youth to
avoid unwanted pregnancies by using reasonable and youth friendly means and educate
about pregnancy, related illness to raise public awareness and about dangers of early
parenthood. All these are mostly related to empowerment of people as responsible
citizens who can contribute to the rapid progress of a country. But someone might ask
how it empowers a person to be a responsible citizen for a developing country like ours.
Empowerment does not mean economic strength or social and political capacity building
alone. From the point of view of a public health specialist like us, such empowerment
indicates the increased capacity of mental, physical, emotional and social activities
experimented during the five stages of a human being like prenatal, infancy, childhood,
adolescent and adulthood. It includes the behaviour as dictated by culture, societal value,
morals, ethics and genetics. So, empowerment is not a simple word but a concept and a
philosophy of life. Empowerment is not a simple arithmetic or a visible concrete pillar of
building. It is in fact a value that a person can acquire by dint of much hard works and
sacrifices. Naturally one can ask how such empowerment could be acquired by practising
family planning and advocating improved life style. Family Planning includes broad
based areas as UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin once observed,
Every woman deserves a safe birth. Yet every day, more than 500 women and
adolescent girls die of pregnancy and childbirth in humanitarian and fragile settings.
Access to services, delivering safely, preventing unintended pregnancy and being safe
from HIV are just as crucial as food, water and shelter. Every person is entitled to human
rights without discrimination of any kind. Yet every day, people affected by crisis, face
impossible choices that jeopardise their health, safety and dignity. How do we conceive
the concept of empowerment? It is the authority or power given to someone to do
something. Empowerment is the process of becoming stronger or more confident,
especially in controlling ones life and claiming ones right. Family planning is an
integral part of human right. Right to choose profession and decide the way of life and
right to education, right to speak and right to live in a decent manner is close to
empowerment. Family planning and choice to decide family size are issues of such
empowerment. Peoples Republic of China understood this reality and switched over to
two family norms and thus allowed freedom of choice of planned parenthood. To gain
this empowerment one needs to understand the spirit and his right to choice correctly.
Herein lies the importance of behaviour changed communication strategy to disseminate
accurately and according to needs and level of understanding of the incumbent. The
National Family Planning Policy of Bangladesh in fact emphasised this issue of
empowerment so that a person can take a decision with informed consent choice while
cafeteria approach is opened to him Family Planning Programme is a success story of
Bangladesh. To sustain the gains so far achieved and overcome future hurdles, there are
ways of new interventions to make it more inclusive. When a person of a country is
empowered with knowledge, capacity and skill supported by good health, the country
must be capable of making remarkable improvement by any means with its capable
human resource. The challenges of attaining the targets of Sustainable Development
Goals 2030 are major issues for the Family Planning Programme in Bangladesh. The
SDG goal 3.7 categorically stated, by 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and
reproductive health care services including family planning, information, education and
integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes. It also
indicated few specific targets like reduction of maternal mortality rate to 70 for 100,000
live births and neo-natal mortality rate to reduce to 12 for 1,000 live births and under -5
mortality to 25 for 1,000 live births. To achieve all these targets, there must be massive
information campaign and activities for small family norms and family planning. The
inter-linkage and integrated nature of programmes with specific vision to empower
people must be taken to build up social capital development and make radical changes in
the life style of people who are very rapidly being urbanised with changes in their way of
living and thoughts. Before we conclude, we can recollect the observation A P J Abul
Kalam, former President of India as follows: Almost half of the population of the world
lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human
development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the
world, even violence. To bring an end to violence and unrest, there must be substantial
efforts to improve the capacity of the people, develop human resource of a nation with
strong workforce for the country. This is possible by adopting meaningful family
planning and generating consciousness toward planned parenthood. The writer is a
former Secretary to the government