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Increase in population growth forces revival of family planning Bill

Friday February 01 2013
watoto

Nursery school children wait to receive milk under the One Milk Cup Per Child National Programme. Increasing population density has forced parliamentarians to dig out for debate a family planning Bill that lay unattended for six years. Photo/CYRIL NDEGEYA

Lawmakers are studying a Bill on maternal health that had gathered dust in the lower chamber of parliament for six years.

If passed in its current form, the Private Members Bill, which is before the Parliamentary Committee on Social Affairs, will enable many women access birth control care services and also slow down Rwanda’s population growth rate.

It has been said that, if unchecked, the population increase will compromise the country’s economic growth.

READ: Rwanda’s population now at 10m — census

The Bill was sponsored by a group of parliamentarians to check population growth and improve citizens’ health. It seeks to compel the government to ensure there are reproductive health care services at every public health facility.

Improved delivery of health programmes have seen trends in fertility rate decrease overall by 1.5 children per woman, a key factor in addressing the country’s very high population density — seen as one of its biggest challenges to sustainable development.

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“Sixty per cent of Rwanda’s population is below 24 years. Due to improved feeding, our daughters can conceive at the age of nine. Something has to been done,” said Daphrose Nyirasafali, a programme specialist at United Nations Population Fund in Kigali.

Article 12 of the draft law makes it mandatory for Rwandans aged 18 years and above to adopt reproductive health care services to improve quality of life.

Since 2000, reproductive health programmes have been guided by safe motherhood and child health, child spacing and birth control, adolescent reproductive health education, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, treatment of sexual violence victims, and gender equality and empowerment.

These components have been viewed as human rights since Rwanda signed a resolution by the international conference on population and development held in Cairo in 1994 but the Bill’s sponsors say by making the document legally binding on the state reproductive health care services will become more effective.

Health experts also say the law will see the government scale up investments in family planning programmes, which will bring the country to achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015.

National strategy

A yet-to-be-published national family planning strategy seen by Rwanda Today will, among other things, expand the adolescent reproductive health programme and scale up community-based initiatives at a cost of Rwf18 billion over four years.

The ambitious plan is however bound to suffer under-funding.

With the recent aid cuts the government cannot increase budget allocations for family planning; so it will have to explore other funding sources, such as national health insurance systems.

ALSO READ: Rwanda subsidises Microgynon pill to promote family planning

Health officials concede that the government may deliver the minimum but cannot increase investments in health and education, raising fears that reproductive health programmes might slow down — hence increased mortality rates, prevalence in HIV infections and increased fertility rates.

The Rwanda Demographic Health Survey 2010 shows all respondents in the active reproductive age bracket knew at least one type of birth control but only 45 per cent had access to family planning care services.

Some 19 per cent had their family planning needs unmet due to insufficient information, lack of counselling and gaps in reproductive health education in schools, among others, and fertility rate decreased from 6.1 per woman in 2005 to 4.6 in 2010.

Official reports show the most common contraceptive methods as injectables at 26 per cent, pills (seven), and implants and traditional methods, each at six per cent.