Country faces population boom

Bangladesh is now under risk of population explosion as family planning programmes have almost been invisible at field level in the country, said Prof Nurun Nabi yesterday.
Prof Nabi, a teacher of Dhaka University, said, “About two thirds of the women, who want no more children and need help from Family Planning Department, do not get the service.”
He was speaking at a symposium on “Universal Access to Reproductive Health Service” at Wings Centre in the capital.
With Justice Kazi Ebadul Hoque in the chair, Syed Mohammad Shahed, secretary general of United Nations Association of Bangladesh (UNAB), moderated the symposium organised by the UNAB.
“Field workers of the department are less likely to visit younger members of the society, and newly married women get their visits once a month at best,” Nunrun Nabi said.
The country's demand and supply of contraceptives remain mismatched, he said, adding that modern women will no more be encouraged by the existing old fashioned approach to use of contraceptives.
Contraceptives should be formulated keeping in mind three stages -- for delaying childbirth, for expanding time period between two pregnancies, and for stopping childbirth -- as women are no longer willing to take birth control pills throughout their reproductive age now, he said.
Though fertility rate has been reducing radically since independence of the country, but the number of women of reproductive age is on the rise.
Speakers in the symposium stressed on women education and employment as educated women usually become jobholders, and are not willing to give frequent births to children.