World Population Day: Message from Syed Murad Ali Shah, Chief Minister, Sindh

TEXT: It gives me great pleasure that Sindh, along with the global community, is commemorating World Population Day to sensitize people regarding problems associated with an alarming growth rate of Population that needs to be checked.

This day also sheds light on health problems faced by women during pregnancy and childbirth, making the need for family planning, gender equality, and maternal health more important than ever.

Pakistan and other developing countries strive to meet FP2030 targets. The targets set for Sindh to achieve CPR by 2025 and 2030 are 47 percent and 57 percent respectively.

These FP 2030 targets encourage making rights-based family planning commitments to support the vision of a future where women and girls everywhere have the freedom and ability to lead healthy lives, make their own informed decisions about contraception, and participate as equals in society and its development.

As a forward-thinking and progressive province, Sindh is well committed to achieving international and national commitments.

The unregulated and rapid population expansion is detrimental to socioeconomic development. The pandemics and natural calamities like devastating rains/floods in 2022 have destroyed the service delivery networks, adversely affecting the health of women and children.

We believe that for bringing improvement in the life of the poor especially women, there is a need for integrated approaches. Sindh has a single Minister of Health and Population Welfare, which demonstrates a realization of the interconnections between family planning and reproductive health services and rights.

The Sindh Integrated Health and Population Project will help improve both the quality and utilization of basic reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition services.

The project will improve access to quality healthcare services for people living in the vicinity of the selected government dispensaries in remote and peri-urban areas and in the flood-affected settlements in Sindh.

Sindh is facing a double burden of population growth due to natural growth and migration from other parts of the country. The migrants usually settle in slums and peri-urban areas.

The Departments of Population Welfare and Health have focused on slums by conducting Family Health Day every week in these areas so as to ensure access to quality family planning and reproductive health services.

Sindh has taken the lead in enacting major legislation for women's and girls' rights, including the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 2013, the Domestic Violence Prevention and Protection Act, 2013, the Reproductive Health Rights Act of 2019 which is recently amended, and enacted with the incorporation of Marital Counseling, Registration of Nikkah, Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance, and Tele Health. The Education Department has introduced Life Skills Based Education for schools and colleges.

For a stronger and developing Sindh, my government is committed to investing in education, healthcare, clean and affordable energy and is working towards gender equality.

I pledge my persistent support to Population Welfare Department. The People's Government will provide political, administrative, and financial assistance to all women in Sindh in the most equitable and indiscriminate manner possible to achieve family planning and reproductive health rights, and will continue to do everything possible to ensure a healthy and prosperous Sindh.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023