TANAUAN, Leyte -- The Commission on Population and Development (PopCom) is eyeing to stop at least 4.11 million unintended pregnancies by 2022 through the revitalized National Program on Family Planning (NPFP).
If couples will be able to achieve their desired number of children, about 2.42 million abortions will be prevented and 2,160 maternal deaths will be averted, according to PopCom.
The main strategy is to raise the modern contraceptive prevalence rate to 65 percent among women of reproductive age.
The intensified family planning program aims to reach out to 11.3 million Filipino couples in the next four years.
“Three out of every 10 pregnancies in the country are unplanned. According to a study, the impact of one child is a reduction of family savings by 33 percent. As a result, the poor are becoming more dependent on services from the government,” Undersecretary Juan Antonio Perez, PopCom executive director, said on Monday.
“It is the poorest among the Filipinos who have four children even if they only want three children. With more children, it is harder for couples to provide the needs of children. The government needs to build more roads, schools, hospitals, and provide services for the growing population,” Perez said.
The country’s fertility rate of 2.7 percent is still far from the 2.1 percent target.
Through contraceptives, PopCom expects to achieve the fertility rate goal by 2022. By 2045, the agency is eyeing to bring down the fertility rate to 1.85 percent.
“The country records an average of two million population increase every year, 10 times than the population growth of Thailand and South Korea,” Perez observed. “We will accelerate the implementation of population management strategies to facilitate and complement other socioeconomic interventions for reaching demographic dividend.”
Demographic dividend refers to the period when the proportion of the working age population increases significantly, as a result of a lower proportion of dependent children due to reduced fertility, enabling households to increase incomes and savings.
The highest PopCom official was at the Haiyan Hotel and Resort here on Monday to lead the regional stakeholder’s dissemination forum on Executive Order (EO) 71 and Joint Memorandum Circular 2019-01.
With this change, the PopCom chief also holds the position as National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) undersecretary for population and development.
President Rodrigo Duterte signed EO 71, renaming PopCom into the Commission on Population and Development and placing it under the NEDA from the Department of Health (DOH).
The directive is seen to strengthen the integration of population and development to increase the country’s economic growth as indicated in the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022, Perez said.
NEDA, DOH, and PopCom signed Joint Memorandum Circular 2019-1 last February 15, aiming to address the needs of the country’s growing population and its impact on social and economic development through a co-managed (by DOH and PopCom) and harmonized National Program on Population and Family Planning.
PopCom is eyeing to convince four million to five million couples to accept family planning methods in the next four years through the agency’s aggressive campaign. The program will need at least PHP1 billion every year.
Under the Duterte administration, the National Program on Family Planning will be revitalized to address the challenge of addressing adequately the needs of the country’s growing population. (PNA)
