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Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Only half of wives use family planning
By Jujemay G. Awit
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
Five of 10 married women in the country use various family planning methods.
But the Population Commission (Popcom) 7 still considers this as bad news, pointing out that in 1995, the family planning prevalence rate was already at 50 percent.
Popcom 7 Director Leo Rama told family planning advocates that there is still a need to increase advocacy if the nation wants to achieve a 2.5 percent growth rate by 2010.
The recent gathering was held at the Cebu City Marriott Hotel and highlighted figures taken from the 2004 Family Planning Survey of the National Statistics Office.
“We still have long way to go before we can achieve the 2.5 growth rate,” Rama said.
The survey also said that even poor women are willing to shell out as much as P30 to manage their family size.
Methods
In the survey, married women were divided into two groups: poor and not poor. Majority of the poor women (20.4%) were willing to pay as much as P30 for pills; some (14.1%) were willing to shell out as much as P50 for pills.
For tubal ligation, close to 30 percent of the poor women say they can pay as much as P100 for the procedure. Some, however, were willing to pay P529, compared to the P966 for those who aren’t poor.
Women belonging to the poor group also said they were willing to pay an average of P132 for an intrauterine device (IUD), compared to P220 for those who are not poor.
As for injectibles, majority of the poor women said they can only shell out P10 while the others can pay as much as P50.
Rama, in mentioning these figures, pointed out that majority of the females get contraceptives from the public sector.
But since the number of contraceptives is expected to dwindle over the next couple of years, Rama suggested that those who can afford to should their supplies from the private sector instead, so more supplies can go to those who cannot afford these.
(November 2, 2005 issue)
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