“About three fifths of maternal deaths around the world take place in humanitarian and fragile contexts. When crises occur, women and girls are disproportionately affected, and are less likely to be prepared or empowered to cope. While significant progress has been made globally in the past decade to provide services to women and girls in humanitarian situations, there are still gaps in action, and in funding” said. Mrs. Saira Afzal Tarar, Minister of National Health Services, Regulations & Coordination on the launching ceremony of “The State of World Population (SOWP) Report” on “SHELTER FROM THE STORM” a transformative agenda for women and girls in a crisis-prone world.
Addressing on the ceremony she further added that humanitarian crisis and disasters cannot always be prevented but with collaborative efforts, their impact can be greatly reduced. Pakistan is among 11 disaster prone countries and continuous war on terror, poverty and vulnerability to disasters like earth quakes and floods has hampered our persistent efforts to protect vulnerable population (women &girls) against these calamities”.
The present government of Pakistan is committed to provide basic needs for family planning, reproductive health care and safe childbirth to strengthen the health systems in Pakistan. The federal government is coordinating and liaising with provincial governments to provide maximum support in order to fulfill the needs of women and girls.”
I very much agree with the suggestion of report for the greater investment in sexual and reproductive health services as a primary element of all humanitarian responses, which is very much in line with existing agreements outlined in the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development. Pakistan is very much supportive of ICPD plan of action.
She appreciated the UNFPA support extended to the Government of Pakistan for restoring the critical reproductive health services during the past emergencies and helping communities and health providers to prepare for future disasters by mobilizing women to lead local disaster risk reduction committees.
The Report highlighted that the urban population growth has become increasingly concentrated in developing countries, where 1.2 million people are migrating to cities every week. The urbanization in Pakistan is also increasingly rapidly. The urbanization along with population growth affecting the resource planning. Vision 2025 is very much focused on such kind of population issues and we are fulfilling all the requirements required to improve these issues.
The demographic and Reproductive Health (RH) indicators for Pakistan are very much close to the DHS 2012-13. The federal government is working with provinces and other stakeholders to improve our health and RH indicators to meet our internationally agreed goals i.e FP2020. The Population Summit 2015 was the land marked event organized by the government of Pakistan shows the commitment of the current government towards population issues.
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