Bid to expand family planning ambit

Drug makers and philanthropic organisations have joined hands to increase access to family planning information, services and products for women in need in poor countries, including Bangladesh. Pfizer Inc, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the London-based Children’s Investment Fund Foundation jointly announced an agreement in New York on Thursday in a global press briefing connecting journalists around the world, including Bangladesh. The agreement will see them expand access to Pfizer’s long-functioning injectable contraceptive, Sayana Press, for women in need in 69 countries. The latest Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) showed that 82 percent of couples having two children did not want more and the rate was 90 percent among those who have three or more children. Most of them complete childbearing in their twenties with two decades of reproductive life in hand. But the survey found only 8 percent of them use long-acting or permanent methods of family planning, effective ways of protecting pregnancies. Injectable contraceptives are a widely used family planning method among women in developing countries where the lifetime risk for death due to a maternal cause can be as a high as one in 15. But in many developing countries a woman must depend on a skilled health worker at a clinic or health post which is not available in remote and hard-to-reach areas. Sayana Press could help fill this gap, according to bdnews24.com.