KARACHI: Speakers at a webinar held on Sunday called for more concerted efforts to invest in reproductive health to provide quality family planning services and information to people and to avoid repeated pregnancies and maternal deaths.

The event was organised by the Population Council to mark World Population Day with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

This year’s theme is “Rights and choices are the answer: Whether baby boom or bust, the solution to shifting fertility rates lies in prioritising the reproductive health and rights of all people”.

Highlighting the government’s commitment to the cause, Senator Dr Zarqa Suhrawardi Taimur, Member Senate Standing Committee on National Health Services Regulations and Coordination, said the government would take all stakeholders on board including religious leaders, media and the young people to achieve sustainable population growth.

Senator Walid Iqbal said the government was making sustained efforts to raise awareness and reduce rapid population growth rate in the country and shared that seven million married couples in Pakistan wanted to space their families but were unable to do so due to lack of access to family planning services.

“The right to family planning is an essential part of the right to human dignity,” he remarked.

Dr Ali Mir representing the council shed light on the importance of prioritising reproductive health rights of people in Pakistan and emphasised that the government needed to focus on provision of rights-based voluntary family planning information, choices and services to maintain a balance between population size and resources to achieve the targets set by the Council of Common Interests (CCI) commitments.

He also called for safeguarding reproductive health rights in the times of crises as disruptions in supply of contraceptives in lockdowns during the pandemic were predicted to result in a sharp rise in unplanned pregnancies, especially for the most vulnerable people in Pakistan.

Samia Ali Shah, also representing the council, cited recent fertility trends in Pakistan and informed the audience that frequent childbirths and unplanned pregnancies resulted in untimely maternal deaths. “If contraceptive use increases from the current 34pc to 55pc, 4,300 mothers can be saved from dying each year in Pakistan due to pregnancy-related issues,” she said.

Advocate Sara Malkani and Dr Bakhtior Kadirov, Acting Country Representative, UNFPA, also spoke.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2021