New family planning drive targets 1.3% growth rate

MANILA, Philippines – This year, the country’s population growth rate has been pegged at 1.9 percent.

The government needs to bring it down further to 1.3-1.4 percent for the population to stabilize, said Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral on Monday.

This could be achieved, Cabral said, by employing, among other strategies, an “intensified family planning campaign” that focuses on an “improved quality of life” for Filipino couples.

“Life can be better when couples plan for their future,” she stressed, speaking during the launch of the Department of Health’s new family planning communication strategy.

“Information is crucial in helping men and women make the right decision for their families,” she said.

Backed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the DOH drive calls for the dissemination nationwide of posters, brochures and other information materials bearing the motto “Plan your family, plan your future.”

“USAID has been a partner of the DOH in the family planning program of the department for more than 30 years now and we are committed to continue supporting the DOH’s health programs in the years to come, such as this campaign,” said Roger Carlson, USAID deputy mission director.

Cabral said the posters and print materials were the “first of a series of communication collateral on family planning” that the DOH would be employing.

“We’ve visited many barangays and interviewed many couples who have expressed their need for proper information (on family planning),” she said.

Citing the 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey of the National Statistics Office, Cabral said that “eight out of 10 married women who have not used any family planning method did not receive any information on the matter from government health workers.”

She expressed confidence the new DOH drive would help disseminate “key messages” on the benefits of a smaller family size.

In an earlier interview, Cabral said the government’s family planning program “has not been as successful as we would want it to be.”

She told the INQUIRER that “even as population growth is coming down, it is not coming down at the rate necessary to improve the socioeconomic status of the country.”

She has repeatedly stressed the need to “fulfill our commitments as embodied in the (government’s) Medium-Term Development Plan and the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.”

Reproductive health and responsible parenthood are part of the country’s fifth MDG, which is improved maternal health by 2015.

“They are related to the reduction of infant and maternal mortality,” she said. –Jerry E. Esplanada, Philippine Daily Inquirer