TEXT: The “World Population Day” is celebrated globally on 11th July to draw attention to the growing population and its impacts on our lives. In November 2022, the world population surpassed 8 billion people. 49.77% out of these eight billion are females.

The theme of WPD-23, “Unleashing the power of gender equality: Uplifting the voices of women and girls to unlock our world’s infinite possibilities" underscores the importance of gender equality and potential of rights and voice of women and girls for resilient and healthier countries.

Government of Sindh is committed to support and protect the rights of women. Women's empowerment is ensured through family planning, which allows them to choose their family size as well as their children's health and education.

Undeniably, making quality family planning available to all women saves lives and creates a healthier population, which contributes to a country’s economy. Population Welfare Department, Government of Sindh has taken commendable steps to ensure universal access to family planning and reproductive health services.

Functional integration of Department of Health and Population through task shifting and task sharing, maintaining contraceptive commodity security and supply of same to the public and private sector, digitization of client data, free of cost FP&RH services, focus on urban and peri-urban areas are such steps that will definitely improve Contraceptive Prevalence Rate.

It gives me great pleasure to report that Government of Sindh, through Population Welfare Department and Department of Health, has set specific targets in the light of commitments made at ICPD25, Nairobi Summit held in November 2019 in Kenya.

The Nairobi conference focuses on “three zeros” i.e zero maternal death, zero unmet need for family planning and zero gender based violence and harmfulpractices against women and girls by 2030. Sindh Government is dedicated to achieve the FP2030 targets and is providing full financial and administrative support to ensure that they are met.

I pledge my complete support to the Population Welfare Department, Government of Sindh and expect that the department along with other stakeholders would raise awareness about the sexual and reproductive health needs and vulnerabilities of women and girls.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023