UN envoy voices concern over falling funding for family planning assistance
Sunday, 15 November 2009
A Z M Anas
A top UN envoy has voiced concern over falling funding for family planning assistance, saying the reduced flow could impinge on Bangladeshi people's access to contraceptive commodities even as demand swells.
Nafis Sadik, a special envoy to the UN secretary general, has said donors' support for family planning services has collapsed to 8.0 per cent, from 55 per cent of total funding for sexual and reproductive health and urged Bangladesh to finance the programme from its own coffers.
"Global population assistance has increased, but that hasn't kept pace with aid for family planning," Ms. Sadik said last week in an interview.
In a stinging attack on the international community for its "paper promise" for jacking up aid in the 1994 Cairo conference, the UN envoy, formerly of the UN Population Fund, noted that funding for family planning programme has been drying up at a time when demand for modern contraception is increasing in Bangladesh.
Some 56 per cent men and women of reproductive age use modern contraceptives such as oral pills, condoms and injectables, according to the latest Demographic and Health Survey, in 2007, while 45 per cent used in 1994.
But supply crunch remains a problem and 17 per cent of an estimated 32 million couples across the country want contraception but don't have access to the modern birth-control methods.
With grant from the donor community waning over the years, Bangladesh has relied mostly on low-cost loans from the World Bank for purchasing contraceptives.
But family planning officials say the country's programme is pinched for cash this year as the World Bank would chip in just US$60 million in loans for the contraceptive procurement, half the country's requirement.
The World Bank said it couldn't meet the requirement, because its own funds are strained by aid cut by donors, who are tightening belts under pressure from the worst global recession in a generation.
Nafis Sadik was in the city last week to attend an international symposium, organised to take stock of Bangladesh's achievement in the field of population and reproductive health since the 1994 conference.
She said that the government should finance from its own coffers to sustain the country's success in limiting the population growth.
The UN envoy noted that unless governments, civil society and the international community "do what they agreed to do," the Cairo Programme of Action is nothing but a paper promise.
Although over population is still a concern for Bangladesh, the country managed to cut its total fertility to 2.7 per women in 2007, joining the league of high-performing Asian peers such as Malaysia, India and the Philippines. The natural growth of population also dropped to 1.48 per cent per year.
The Pakistani-born UN envoy, however, came up with laudatory remarks for the current US administration for returning to what she called "leading position" in support of international population programme, but warned Bangladesh "cannot afford to wait on overseas assistance."
Five former USAID officials, in a report published in the prestigious British health journal Lancet, have urged the Obama administration to double aid for the US agency's family planning programme to US$1.2 billion in 2010, and $1.5 billion in 2014, from the 2008 level of $457 million.
Officials said contraceptive availability is essential if Bangladesh wants to control unintended pregnancy and its runaway population, which according to Population Reference Bureau hit 162 million in mid-July, although official estimates are much lower.
But supply of modern contraceptive commodities in the country, particularly in Sylhet and Chittaging Hill Tract regions, continues to be unmatched with demand.
A top UN envoy has voiced concern over falling funding for family planning assistance, saying the reduced flow could impinge on Bangladeshi people's access to contraceptive commodities even as demand swells.
Nafis Sadik, a special envoy to the UN secretary general, has said donors' support for family planning services has collapsed to 8.0 per cent, from 55 per cent of total funding for sexual and reproductive health and urged Bangladesh to finance the programme from its own coffers.
"Global population assistance has increased, but that hasn't kept pace with aid for family planning," Ms. Sadik said last week in an interview.
In a stinging attack on the international community for its "paper promise" for jacking up aid in the 1994 Cairo conference, the UN envoy, formerly of the UN Population Fund, noted that funding for family planning programme has been drying up at a time when demand for modern contraception is increasing in Bangladesh.
Some 56 per cent men and women of reproductive age use modern contraceptives such as oral pills, condoms and injectables, according to the latest Demographic and Health Survey, in 2007, while 45 per cent used in 1994.
But supply crunch remains a problem and 17 per cent of an estimated 32 million couples across the country want contraception but don't have access to the modern birth-control methods.
With grant from the donor community waning over the years, Bangladesh has relied mostly on low-cost loans from the World Bank for purchasing contraceptives.
But family planning officials say the country's programme is pinched for cash this year as the World Bank would chip in just US$60 million in loans for the contraceptive procurement, half the country's requirement.
The World Bank said it couldn't meet the requirement, because its own funds are strained by aid cut by donors, who are tightening belts under pressure from the worst global recession in a generation.
Nafis Sadik was in the city last week to attend an international symposium, organised to take stock of Bangladesh's achievement in the field of population and reproductive health since the 1994 conference.
She said that the government should finance from its own coffers to sustain the country's success in limiting the population growth.
The UN envoy noted that unless governments, civil society and the international community "do what they agreed to do," the Cairo Programme of Action is nothing but a paper promise.
Although over population is still a concern for Bangladesh, the country managed to cut its total fertility to 2.7 per women in 2007, joining the league of high-performing Asian peers such as Malaysia, India and the Philippines. The natural growth of population also dropped to 1.48 per cent per year.
The Pakistani-born UN envoy, however, came up with laudatory remarks for the current US administration for returning to what she called "leading position" in support of international population programme, but warned Bangladesh "cannot afford to wait on overseas assistance."
Five former USAID officials, in a report published in the prestigious British health journal Lancet, have urged the Obama administration to double aid for the US agency's family planning programme to US$1.2 billion in 2010, and $1.5 billion in 2014, from the 2008 level of $457 million.
Officials said contraceptive availability is essential if Bangladesh wants to control unintended pregnancy and its runaway population, which according to Population Reference Bureau hit 162 million in mid-July, although official estimates are much lower.
But supply of modern contraceptive commodities in the country, particularly in Sylhet and Chittaging Hill Tract regions, continues to be unmatched with demand.