Women in Nsanje shun family planning
About 60 percent of Nsanje inhabitants continue shunning the use of family planning services despite encountering several problems that result from overpopulation.
Community Based Service Manager for Family Planning (FPAM), Ruth Khudeche said on Thursday only 40 percent of women in the district use family planning methods regardless of their high fertility rate.
“Fertility rate for women in the district is 6.2 percent meaning that every woman gives birth to an average number of 6.2 children, which is higher than the nation’s 5.7 percent fertility rate,” said Khudeche.
The CBSM highlighted that if the women who are very fertile continue avoiding family planning methods and fail to observe child spacing as was the case, then the population will shoot to 693, 000 by the year 2040.
FPAM official expressed fear that the population of the district was already high such that if the inhabitants did not observe family planning issues then they would soon be without land.
She emphasized that overpopulation is a crosscutting issue which will completely affect the social economic production like health, education and agriculture, “rapid population growth means many people sharing the limited resources like schools, medicine and farm inputs,” she said.
Acting Director of Planning and Development, Kennedy Adamson said the district would mainstream family planning issues in their routine programme emphasizing that the council would later on include activities in the District Implementation Plan so as to reduce problems that are brought by overpopulation.
“Nsanje must be the first district to observe family planning issues since it is lagging behind in development due to inadequate resources,” said Adamson.
Adamson also said the council would lobby for more service providers in family planning services mentioning the hospital as the only family planning service provider.
“Family planning issues were silent but we promise to sensitize the communities on them so that the district develops,” said Adamson.
