World Population Day 2018: 7 innovations to control population explosion in India according to experts

These innovations are the results of tried-and-tested practices.

Sandhya Raghavan | Updated: July 2, 2018 12:14 pm

Tags: Family Planning World Population Day 2017

India, the second-most populous country in the world which is currently home to 18 percent of the world’s population, is set to overtake China in this respect by 2028. The nation’s 1.3-billion-strong population has been bearing down on its resources and causing majority of India’s socio-economic problems. If left unchecked, the population problem in India will acquire sinister proportions. With a view to counter this problem, the Indian National Congress set up the National Planning Committee back in 1935.

Despite the nation being so proactively involved in its efforts to reduce birth rates, the statistics don’t yield any encouraging results. The National Family and Health Survey conducted in 2015-2016 shows that the contraception prevalence rate among currently married women aged 15-49 has declined since 2005-2006 in most of the Indian states. A team of experts comprising Professor Jay Satia, Kavita Chauhan, Aruna Bhattacharya and Nirmala Mishra has compiled the recent innovations in family planning techniques in India, based on some real life case studies.

1. Integrated services and comprehensive programme – The experts suggest the Ananya programme which reached out to the people in the backward areas by adopting a more holistic approach. According to experts, the programme shows improvement in India’s Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH+A Strategy). Ananya employed women workers at the end-level services to improve the reach of the programme.
Another case study features Urban Health Initiative (UHI) that aims to increase the usage of intra-uterine contraceptive devices and depot medroxy progesterone acetate (a manufactured hormone that works as a birth control) in Uttar Pradesh through public private partnership.

2. Improving implementation of government programmes – The experts suggest grading the quality of public facilities made available to the common man at the sub-divisional hospital level and below. They insist on setting a quality standard, strengthening the system and creating a culture of quality so that the people always get the best service.

Through a case study from Odisha, the experts demonstrate how investment in the logistics management information system can help in improving the contraceptive supply chain, ensuring there is never a shortage of contraceptives for the common man. The experts also call for using public-private partnership in the integrated service delivery system.

3. Enhancing private sector role– The experts supports the role of private health care providers to improve service delivery system. They also speak about going door-to-door to distribute contraceptives, as it was done in Assam. While people are familiar with common techniques such as birth control and condoms, not many know about effective methods like intrauterine devices. The experts believe there these devices should be promoted at a grass-root level among people through an excellent service providing system that can reach out to more people.

4. Increasing access, availability and quality of services for specific methods – The experts speak about the improvement in contraceptive usage in different local settings. They suggest training service providers and community volunteers or promoting mobile service to improve the access, availability and quality of birth control services like intra-uterine contraceptive devices, standard days method which helps women keep track of their menstrual cycle to watch out for fertile days, lactational amenorrhoea method which promotes breastfeeding to stop menses, and non-scalpel vasectomy, a relatively less-invasive technique.

5. Advocating family planning — The experts stress on the importance of advocating talks of family planning and reproductive choices among the people. Since there is no resistance to the idea of family planning, the need for its advocacy has not been felt in the country.

6. Creating demand through behaviour change communication, awareness generation and incentives — The experts elaborates in successfully meeting men’s’ and women’s’ planning needs by increasing their participation. Scepticism regarding intra-uterine devices should be removed by inducing behaviour change communication product. The project Pahel is an example of how information, research and the evidence regarding birth control devices can be made available to people to dispel their fears. Through a third case study, the experts say that mass media should be mobilised to improve awareness.

7. Meeting the contraceptive needs of special groups — The experts suggest counselling and educating young people and school intervention to improve family-life-education among school-going girls. Through the orientation programmes, youngsters can be warned about the ills of early marriage, the need for healthy timing and spacing pregnancy. Adolescent fertility project should be introduced to adolescent women abou the postponement of marriage and use of family planning methods.

Read: Ayurvedic contraception methods

Reference:
Satia, J., Chauhan, K., Bhattacharya, A., & Mishra, N. (Eds.). (2015). Innovations in Family Planning: Case Studies from India. SAGE Publications India.

Image source: Shutterstock

Published: July 10, 2017 4:14 pm | Updated:July 2, 2018 12:14 pm

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