People living in Dhaka city’s slums, who comprise around 40 per cent of the total population of the capital, appear to be ignored by the government’s Family Planning Programme as there is no door-to-door counselling and service.
Rehana, who lives in the railway slum in Mailbagh, has been looking for advice on family planning.
‘No one has visited the slum or counselled me about family planning,’ she said.
She told New Age that she has not been given any short-term contraceptive products either by a government or non-government organisation.
‘I know a clinic in Khilgaon which administers injections that work for three months, but they charge Tk 300 for each injection, which is impossible for me to pay,’ she said.
Nurjahan, who has lived in the same slum for over 10 years, also said that no one had come to their slum to provide advice on family planning methods or indeed any other health-related issue.
Jyotsna, 18, who has lived in the railway slum in Tejgaon for the last two years, echoed the complaints of the other women. ‘No one has yet visited me or given me advice on family planning.’
None of them knew where they could get family planning services and they had very little knowledge of what contraceptives were available.
The Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007 found that the use of contraceptives by married woman has declined from 58 per cent in 2004 to 56 per cent in 2007.
Experts said that seventy-two per cent of couples need to use contraceptives to enable the country to reduce its fertility rate to 2.2 per cent by the end of 2011, the government’s target.
According to the report of the BDHS, around 14 per cent of the couples who did not use contraceptives wanted to, but did not have access to them.
A total of 164 family welfare assistants and 98 family welfare visitors are working in Dhaka city, but this is considered to be a grossly insufficient number. Moreover, they do not go from door to door in the city’s slums.
Although, a total of 63 non-government organisations are also registered to deliver family planning services in the area under Dhaka City Corporation, they only provide clinic-based services, said the officials of Directorate General of Family Planning.
Currently the DGFP provides seven types of family planning methods to the NGOs, free of cost.
The NGOs, however, charge service fees from people for providing assistance, said the officials.
Professor AKM Nur un Nabi, of the Department of Population Sciences of the University of Dhaka, said that the current organisation was inadequate to provide proper family planning advice.
The government family welfare assistants are not properly functioning now as they increasingly do not go from door to door, he said.
‘Everyday people move from villages into the city, and they are totally outside this programme,’ he added.
Nabi said that there was no specific direction from the government about who will cover the family planning needs of the people who live in slums.
‘About 40 per cent of the people in the city are slum dwellers, so we have to think about them seriously. Otherwise the total family planning situation will collapse,’ he said.
People in cities have been ignored in this programme from the very beginning, but the situation becomes worse day by day, he added.
MM Nizamuddin, DGFP’s director general, said that their workers try to provide services to people in the city. ‘But there has been no recruitment at the field level in the last 30 years, and such an inadequate number of people cannot provide services properly.’
-With New Age input
