PR No. 69 Saira Afzal Tarar pledges accelerated efforts for family health and population planning Islamabad

Minister for National Health Services Saira Afzal Tarar presiding over World Population Day event pledged accelerated efforts towards achieving goals in population planning and access to reproductive health services.

The special event was attended by Ministers, Secretaries, and top level representatives from all provinces and regions alongwith heads of partner agencies.

The Minister said today we are commemorating two important international events to draw the world’s attention to important concerns regarding population trends.

World Population Day 2017 is being celebrated all over the world by governments, international partners and civil society today. This year the theme is Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations”. This year’s World Population Day gains further importance by the fact that the FP2020 Family Planning Summit 2017 is being hosted in London today by DFID, UNFPA and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the 2017 Summit, partners from around the world are reconvening to evaluate lessons learned, invest in proven solutions and take collective action to accelerate progress towards the FP2020 goal. The global community and Pakistan fully recognize the centrality of family planning as an issue that affects human beings in the most personal ways, families in their wellbeing and survival, and nations in terms of their health, development and prosperity.

The Minister said Ministry of NHSR&C decided to set up a Satellite event so we could make our pledges and commitments right here in Pakistan. We want to publicly convey the Government’s commitments to play a leadership and ambitious role leading up to the FP2020, the final year of our commitments, said the Minister.

She said interest in World Population day increased when the global population neared five billion on 11th of July in the year 1987. And today in July 2017 at a population of 7.5 billion facing a population of over 9 billion by 2050 will be a great challenge. Pakistan has moved from a population of 110 million in 1989 adding more than 80 million people by 2017. Our government fully recognizes that issues of sustainability, climate change, women’s empowerment are all embedded in these population trends and deserve our focus, said the Minister.

She said our maternal mortality rates and infant child mortality rates must come down as has been pledged in the SDGs and we know that this cannot happen without access to reproductive health services and Birth spacing practices. In Pakistan alone, 12,000 women die annually in the process of giving birth. Children are dying due to malnutrition and lack of care at the critical first year of life. We cannot allow this to continue. As an evolution of the MDGs, SDG 3.7 emphasizes and includes universal access to family planning services.

 

The Government of Pakistan has committed to this goal in September 2015, which falls directly in the mandate of our Ministry and the Provincial health departments. Our Ministry is taking special initiatives through the National Health vision to achieve universal access to all health services and intend to make special efforts to include reproductive health in all its programs, she said.

Recognizing that we need to accelerate our efforts we are making some strong commitments. I make these commitments on behalf of both the Federal Ministry, as it is responsible for reporting on international commitments, and on behalf of the provinces that have more direct responsibility of implementation, said the Minister.

The commitments announced by the Minister were the commitment to Raise the CPR to 50 percent by 2020, Offer greater contraceptive choice through an improved method mix, better counselling, and expanding the use of long acting reversible methods, availing all possible opportunities in the health system especially antenatal and post-delivery consultations, expand the program focus to provide services and information to men and gatekeepers so as to reduce unmet need among those women who cite husbands or social or religious opposition as reasons for non-use, to focus on addressing the information and Family Planning service needs of 100,000 married adolescent girls aged 15-19 to reduce their unmet need, and meet the need of unmarried youth for reproductive health information through life skills based education, Provincial Ministers of Finance to assure an increase in financing, moving towards the 2020 goal of $2.50 per capita, including both private and public funding for family planning with support from the Federal Government.

The event was also addressed by Population Welfare Minister Punjab Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad Bharadh, Shehnaz Wazir Ali former Special Assistant to Prime Minister and representative of Chief Minister Sindh, Dr. Talib Lashari Technical Adviser on Population Government of Sindh.

MPA and former health Minister KP Shaukat Yousafzai, Asmat Ullah Kakar Secretary Health Balochistan and Zahid Abbasi Secretary Population welfare AJK attended the event.

Country’s top population expert and Head of Population Council Dr. Zeba Sathar made a special presentation on the occasion to lay out the objectives of World Population Day London Summit 2017.

The meeting was also attended by country head of UNFPA Mr. Hassan Mohtashami and Deputy Head of DFID Ms. Judith Herbertson.

 

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