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Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, April 12
Fighting population explosion back home, Pakistan has expressed keen interest in India’s family planning programme. The Pakistan delegation raised the issue during the bilateral meeting with the Indian side at the just-concluded gathering of the SAARC Health Ministers in New Delhi.
The Indian side, represented by Health Minister JP Nadda, told Pakistani officials that the shift from targeted to a choice-based family welfare model led to massive gains on population stabilisation with just nine states left to reach replacement levels of fertility which is 2.1.
The Union Health Ministry has offered Pakistan all help in studying India’s family welfare model which provides couples a wide basket of choices from contraception and spacing to sterilisations.
Against India’s Total Fertility Rate (the number of children a woman will bear in her reproductive lifetime) of 2.3, Pakistan’s TFR is 3.9 while it has set itself an ambitious goal of reducing the same to 2.1 by 2025. India’s TFR was 6 in 1950s.
The Pakistan side said religious sensitivities back home needed to be honoured while devising modern family planning strategy in that country where spacing is preferred over contraception due to religious reasons.
“We were surprised to learn that Pakistan recently made contraception available through its public health system. The Pakistan delegation wanted to know from us how we were running our National Family Health Programme and what our population stabilisation measures were. We explained everything in detail and offered help with micro plans, training modules, and success stories should they need help. A formal proposal would have to come from their side,” said a top Health Ministry official.
The conversation, sources said, was rooted in the similarities between India and Pakistan so far as the cultural and religious contexts of the family planning debate go. While Pakistan is a Muslim-majority nation, India is home to a large proportion of the world’s Muslim population (estimated 10%)
“The understanding is that India has reduced its TFR from 6 in 1950s to 2.3 now by taking all communities including the Muslims along. With Pakistan acknowledging our success, the sense we got was that what was once our Achille’s heel is today our strength, “ said a ministry official.
Pakistan’s recently adopted population policy has taken many steps forward on family welfare by promising to boost support for family planning services and information as the country’s population is projected to grow to 335 million by 2050 as against 196 million today. It is here that the Pakistan Health Ministry (called Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination) hopes to learn from India though Pakistan has a separate ministry to look into population issues.
Pak keen on birth control lessons from India
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, April 12
Fighting population explosion back home, Pakistan has expressed keen interest in India’s family planning programme. The Pakistan delegation raised the issue during the bilateral meeting with the Indian side at the just-concluded gathering of the SAARC Health Ministers in New Delhi.
The Indian side, represented by Health Minister JP Nadda, told Pakistani officials that the shift from targeted to a choice-based family welfare model led to massive gains on population stabilisation with just nine states left to reach replacement levels of fertility which is 2.1.
The Union Health Ministry has offered Pakistan all help in studying India’s family welfare model which provides couples a wide basket of choices from contraception and spacing to sterilisations.
Against India’s Total Fertility Rate (the number of children a woman will bear in her reproductive lifetime) of 2.3, Pakistan’s TFR is 3.9 while it has set itself an ambitious goal of reducing the same to 2.1 by 2025. India’s TFR was 6 in 1950s.
The Pakistan side said religious sensitivities back home needed to be honoured while devising modern family planning strategy in that country where spacing is preferred over contraception due to religious reasons.
“We were surprised to learn that Pakistan recently made contraception available through its public health system. The Pakistan delegation wanted to know from us how we were running our National Family Health Programme and what our population stabilisation measures were. We explained everything in detail and offered help with micro plans, training modules, and success stories should they need help. A formal proposal would have to come from their side,” said a top Health Ministry official.
The conversation, sources said, was rooted in the similarities between India and Pakistan so far as the cultural and religious contexts of the family planning debate go. While Pakistan is a Muslim-majority nation, India is home to a large proportion of the world’s Muslim population (estimated 10%)
“The understanding is that India has reduced its TFR from 6 in 1950s to 2.3 now by taking all communities including the Muslims along. With Pakistan acknowledging our success, the sense we got was that what was once our Achille’s heel is today our strength, “ said a ministry official.
Pakistan’s recently adopted population policy has taken many steps forward on family welfare by promising to boost support for family planning services and information as the country’s population is projected to grow to 335 million by 2050 as against 196 million today. It is here that the Pakistan Health Ministry (called Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination) hopes to learn from India though Pakistan has a separate ministry to look into population issues.
Pak keen on birth control lessons from India
