ISLAMABAD: Participants at a workshop on family planning vision-2020 on Tuesday stressed on the need to counter the alarming rate of population growth.
They claimed that family planning was a national issue, which needs innovative solutions. They said that the government should adopt steps that encourage people to control the size of their families. The participants also emphasised on the need to address the issue of child marriage.
The regional office of the Rahnuma Family Planning Association of Pakistan organised the workshop, which was attended by representatives from the media, district government, clerics, volunteers, partners and civil society.
Family Planning Vision-2020 is a global partnership that supports the right of women and girls to decide freely and for themselves whether, when and how many children they want to have. The initiative works with governments, civil society, multilateral organisations, donors, private sector and the R&D community. Their aim is to ensure universal access to reproductive health and to raise the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) to 55% by 2020, enabling an additional 120 million women and girls to use contraceptives.
The participants were given a presentation by Programme Officer Bahadur Ali Shah, which covered the brief history of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning. Talking about the safe motherhood, clerics were of the view that Islam itself is a religion of planning.
The participants shared their views on the subject and requested all stakeholders to support the FP-2020 targets. They stressed for the early holding of the census, which was needed to ensure sound, long-term planning and to avoid inadequate development while pointing out that political will and vision was required to ensure the desired results.
