People living in Dhaka city\u2019s slums, who comprise around 40 per cent of the total population of the capital, appear to be ignored by the government\u2019s Family Planning Programme as there is no door-to-door counselling and service.
\nRehana, who lives in the railway slum in Mailbagh, has been looking for advice on\u00a0family\u00a0planning.
\n\u2018No one has visited the slum or counselled me about family planning,\u2019 she said.
\nShe told New Age that she has not been given any short-term contraceptive products either by a government or non-government organisation.
\n\u2018I 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,\u2019 she said.
\nNurjahan, 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.
\nJyotsna, 18, who has lived in the railway slum in Tejgaon for the last two years, echoed the complaints of the other women. \u2018No one has yet visited me or given me advice on family planning.\u2019
\nNone of them knew where they could get family planning services and they had very little knowledge of what contraceptives were available.
\nThe 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.
\nExperts 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\u2019s target.
\nAccording 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.
\nA 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\u2019s slums.
\nAlthough, 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.
\nCurrently the DGFP provides seven types of family planning methods to the NGOs, free of cost.
\nThe NGOs, however, charge service fees from people for providing assistance, said the officials.
\nProfessor 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.
\nThe government family welfare assistants are not properly functioning now as they increasingly do not go from door to door, he said.
\n\u2018Everyday people move from villages into the city, and they are totally outside this programme,\u2019 he added.
\nNabi 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.
\n\u2018About 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,\u2019 he said.
\nPeople in cities have been ignored in this programme from the very beginning, but the situation becomes worse day by day, he added.
\nMM Nizamuddin, DGFP\u2019s director general, said that their workers try to provide services to people in the city. \u2018But 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.\u2019<\/p>\n

-With New Age<\/span> input<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People living in Dhaka city\u2019s slums, who comprise around 40 per cent of the total population of the capital, appear to be ignored by the government\u2019s 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\u00a0family<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[5063,5062,5064],"yoast_head":"\n