NEW DELHI (NNN-Bernama): India needs to increase contraceptive choices available to people and rework its family planning programmes to meet special needs of diverse target groups, according to civil society stakeholders.
Extensive consultations held in a series of meetings across the country under the auspices of the Family Planning Association of India have pitched for a rights-based approach for family planning, Press Trust of India reported.
In a country that adds about 18 million people every year and where stark inter-state variations exist in statistics, there is a need to improve the quality of services.
The stakeholders that participated in the consultations in 13 states, including 448 representatives from civil society groups and 167 government officials and functionaries agreed that the imperative was to expand the basket of contraceptive choices available to Indians.
Since the 1970s when sterilisation programmes, often forced, created much furore among the people, India has made them a part of the reproductive health care measures in its family planning policies.
"Family planning has tended to focus on sterilisation, typically female sterilisation over reversible methods such as condoms, oral contraceptives and intrauterine devices," a statement from the civil society organisations said after the consultations.
The groups pitched for a focused programme that would address the reproductive needs of the vast population.
They said meeting the family planning needs of the population will require unprecedented political commitment and resources from the government, donors and the private sector.
The effort would also require an individualised focus on the special needs of diversified groups such as adolescents and young people, divorced and single individuals, among others.
The Global FPA Summit is scheduled to be held in London in July where recommendations from these consultations will help define India's approach to the issue.
Among the recommendations include increasing young people's access to family planning resources, enlarging access through more choices, integration of family planning, maternal child health and HIV and family planning through a gender and rights' perspective.
Centre for Public Policy professor Geeta Sen said an estimated 12.5 per cent of women in India want to delay or avoid a pregnancy but are not using effective methods of family planning. -NNN-BERNAMA
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