Daily Times

Pakistan needs to control birth rate. Its family planning policies are going spectacularly down. Even though a comprehensive family planning program was launched in the early 60s, the country still has the highest population growth rate in the subcontinent. Pakistan had a population of 33 million in 1950, surprisingly. Today, it is around 210 million; ranking us as the sixth-most populous country after China, India, USA, Indonesia and Brazil.

According to UNESCO’s statistics, Pakistan has the highest population growth rate at around two per cent. Moreover, it shares 2.81 per cent of the total world population, wherein 34.9 per cent of its population is urban.

On average, each family has 3.1 children. If the population of the country continues to grow with the same rate (1.90 per cent), it is likely to double in the next 37 years; making Pakistan the third-most populous country of the world. Meanwhile, the land area will remain the same rather be reduced, due to residential plans.

Up till now, there has remained an overabundance of five-years-plans and policies with unsatisfactory outcomes. On the other hand, the population is growing gradually. It is, thus, very important to go through the politico-economic dynamics of the family planning programs, which might be able to show the shortcomings behind plans to tackle the growth of population.

Family planning has also been weakened due to political interruptions. The err of General Ayub supported the family planning programs, which resulted in the first-ever most comprehensive plan, from 1960 to 1965, to tackle the high population growth rate. Afterwards, the plan was badly politicised by the right-wing religious and left-wing people’s party to overthrow the regime.

When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto won the election, insignificant support was given to family planning because he never wants the same slogan to be raised against his government. Benazir Bhutto’s 1993-6 government revitalised the program and some important progress was made. The contraceptive prevalence rate rose from 12 per cent to 28 per cent; with a 137 per cent increase.

According to experts, now, in Sindh, the procrastination to cope with the issue is due to misperceptions, lack of trained staff and other challenges.

It can be controlled by making a real difference in the area of family planning. Consciousness needs to be raised where the general populace is provided with proper counselling. Stakeholders must put in collective efforts to resolve this issue.

If our population continues to grow with the same rate (1.90 per cent), it is likely to double in the next 37 years

As far as a new study conducted by World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned, research in 36 countries found that two-thirds of sexually active women, who wished to delay or limit childbearing, stopped using contraception over fears of side effects, health concerns and dryness of the likelihood of conception. This led to one in four pregnancies being unintended. However, a journalist and columnist, Zuhaib Khan, stated that a woman should give birth, but there should be a four-year gap between children. “It will maintain the health of an expectant and the child will have his/her right by being fed,” he added.

JPMC Executive Director, Dr Seemi Jamali, shared her experience that basically, a very important factor here was our basic level of education, which was zilch. “If we had a way to educate our people, I am sure people would concentrate on having smaller families but we also cannot deny the effect of religious taboos and we also need to work to provide healthy activity in the illiterate community, counselling and lady health workers.”

Giving birth every year can cause stress and burden in a couple; putting a few negative impacts on conjugal lives. Females need to be educated regarding this on a priority basis.

A lady health worker of Karachi shared her views over the issue that unintended pregnancies do not necessarily equate to pregnancy, which is unwanted. It may lead to a wide range of health risks for the mother and child, like malnutrition, illness, abuse and neglect, and even death.

When it comes to family planning, it never means to kill children after they are born or to abort but to plan the birth of children in a way that parents can bear all the expenses for their education, health, living space, upkeep, etc. in a proper manner. In the holy Quran, it is instructed that a child be suckled for two years. It is well known that as long as the mother suckles, she may not conceive. Thus, indirectly, the Quran suggests spacing between children.

The best weapon to this remains the education of woman. If women are less empowered and little educated, they will probably take little part in decision-making about having children.

Less empowerment directly leads to less control over fertility. For instance, delays in lowering the fertility rate results in the requirement of more infrastructure and services to serve a large populace. Moreover, the growth of population in schools makes it hard to achieve educational goals. Lastly, the less favourable age structure of economic development leads the situation to a reduced potential of the demographic dividend.

The writer is a correspondent, Daily Times and tweets at @maferozi)