Dhaka, Bangladesh — A million of death risk is happening in Bangladesh every year due to unintended pregnancies which are avoidable; research finding presented in a dissemination meeting held in MOHFW arranged by PPD at in 2nd April, 2014.
About 75 million unintended pregnancies are occurring every year in the Globe; while Bangladesh is contributing approximately 1 million per year. 28% of total pregnancy is unplanned and 12.7% are unwanted in Bagladesh.
National Stakeholders Meeting for Dissemination of the Country Profile Report on Understanding Unintended Pregnancies in Bangladesh
The meeting disseminated the Country Profile Report on Understanding Unintended Pregnancies in Bangladesh; His Excellency Mr. Zahid Maleque, Hon’ble State Minister of MOHFW showed his deep concern on per capita health expenditure of the people of Bangladesh and raised the issue of limited budgetary allocation for health in the national budget. He also requested the developing partners to work for raising awareness among the people for safe MRM practices and unsafe abortion.
Ms. Argentina Piccin, Country Representative of UNFPA Bangladesh, raised the issue of human resource allocation and supervision in health sector. She said that the lack of trained human resources is one of the major challenges in the health sector of Bangladesh.
Dr. Joe Thomas, ED of PPD explained PPD’s expectation; he added that PPD wants to facilitate Policy dialogue in the issue of unintended pregnancies to bring the researcher and policy maker in common consensus so that they could come up with policy recommendations, specially at the time of Post ICPD and beyond MDG perspective when most of the countries are considering to update the population policy.
Dr. Ubaidur Rob, Country Representative, Population Council Bangladesh drew the attention of the audience and the policymakers on the facts, figures and trend of the unintended pregnancy situation of the country.
In her presentation, Dr. Fauzia Akhter Huda of ICDDR,B presented the research result and recommendations of the Country Profile Report on Understanding Unintended Pregnancy in Bangladesh. On behalf of the consortium of the project named “Strengthening Evidence for Programming on Unintended Pregnancy (STEP-UP)”, ICDDR,B developed a country profile report and the report which was validated by the national taskforce members through a 2 days training workshop.
The meeting was wrapped up by Mr. M. M. Neazuddin, Secretary, MOHFW; he appreciated the recommendation came out through the intensive research evidence. He thanked PPD and other consortium members to take such timely initiative to address the burning issue of unintended pregnancy. Mr. Secretary suggested the Director of MCH to formulate a working group with the SETP-UP consortium members and other relevant stakeholder to find out the possibilities how these recommendations could be translated into policy and recommend it to the Government. He also assured that Government will take immediate initiatives to find out the programmatic potentiality of the SETP-UP evidence.
About STEP-UP Project
The STEP-UP (Strengthening Evidence for Programming on Unintended Pregnancy) generates policy –relevant research to promote the evidence based approach for improving access to FP and safe abortion. The project is funded by UKaid and is implanting in five countries: Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, India and Senegal. The consortium partners of the STEP-UP are Population Council ( Coordinating Partner), African Population and Health Research Center, ICDDR,B, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Marie Stopes International and PPD.
About PPD
Partners in Population and Development (PPD) is an intergovernmental alliance comprising of 26 developing countries. This alliance provides the mechanism to promote partnership and cooperation between the member countries, towards achieving the goals of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Programme of Action (PoA) and also the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It holds a status of Permanent Observer status at the United Nations General Assembly.
The current member countries of the Alliance are, Bangladesh, Benin, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, Vietnam, Yemen and Zimbabwe. The PPD member countries cover more than 57% of the global population. www.partners-popdev.org
PPD MEDIA CONTACT
Masuma Billah, Advocacy and Communication Officer
+88 01716 011683
masuma@ppdsec.org
Skype: masuma.billah