The government would provide round the clock safe delivery facilities at union level hospitals by June 2014, family planning director general AKM Amir Hossain said Saturday.
Increased hospital based delivery would reduce child and maternal mortality rates, he said at the launching of a three-year family planning campaign organised by the
Directorate General of Family Planning at a city hotel.
Child marriage remains a matter of great concern for the country as it increases the rates of birth and maternal mortality, he said.
The campaign, set to end in 2016, will focus on adolescent girls and boys, newly married couples and the country’s young population, he said.
Unveiling the campaign slogan and logo, health secretary MM NIaz Uddin said the programme would seek to raise awareness among the target groups.
Officials said Sylhet and Chittagong were among the areas that lagged behind in cutting down high birth rate.
High birth rate is a problem for the urban slums also, they said.
Amir said birth rate reduction in urban slums, not the in the jurisdiction of DGFP, posed a huge challenge.
‘As the slums are under the city corporations I can appoint no worker there,’ he said.
‘The NGOs, monitoring the slums, only send us their reports,’ he said.
‘But as the DG of family planning, as I have to shoulder the responsibilities of all the family planning performance in the country, I requested the local government
and health secretaries to look into the issue,’ he said.
UN Population Fund representative in Bangladesh Argentina P Matavel Piccin attended the function.
-With New Age input
