Uganda: Lang vej endnu for familieplanlægning

Forfatter billede

Den ugandiske indsats for øget fokus på redskaber til familieplanlægning har vundet vigtige økonomiske og politiske sejre det forgangne år, men eksperter påpeger, at utilstrækkelig politisk vilje og ringe sundhedsfaciliteter fortsat vil hindre kvinders og pigers adgang til præservativer, skriver IRIN News tirsdag.

KAMPALA: At a global family planning summit in July, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni announced that his government would increase its annual expenditure on family planning supplies from US$3.3million to $5million for the next five years. He also pledged to mobilize an additional $5 million from the country’s donors.

“Efforts will be placed on creating an enabling policy environment to allow women to exercise family planning choices, increasing financial investment in health, human resource development and management, increasing commodities and supplies and effective delivery to reduce stock-outs,” Christine Ondoa, Uganda’s Health Minister, told IRIN. “These proposed investments in health and family planning will significantly reduce maternal mortality, child mortality, and… accelerate Uganda’s progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and middle-income country status.”

With an annual growth rate of 3.4 percent, Uganda has one of the world’s fastest growing populations, and experts say the country’s public services are unable to cope.

In response, the Ministry of Health has laid out a roadmap for providing universal access to family planning, involving the integration of family planning into other health services. The government plans to reduce the ‘unmet need’ for family planning from 40 percent to 10 percent by 2022; women are considered to have an unmet need if they wish to space their children’s births or limit childbearing but are not using contraception.

Although almost all adults in Uganda can name one method of family planning, just 30 percent of married women of reproductive age use any form of contraception, according to the 2011 Demographic and Health Survey.

Læs mere via nedenstående link til IRIN News.