What is family planning?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), family planning is defined as “the ability of individuals and couples to anticipate and attain their desired number of children and the spacing and timing of their births.
Different family planning methods.
A wide variety of family planning methods are available to choose from. Successful family planning programs listen to the different needs of clients and respond with strategies that expand informed, voluntary contraceptive choice: offering a range of affordable contraceptive methods; providing client-centered, comprehensive counseling; employing a variety of service delivery approaches; and ensuring continuous supplies of contraceptive commodities. Expanding individuals’ contraceptive choices supports increased and continuous contraceptive use. Examples include: long-acting reversable contraception (implant or Intra Uterine Device (IUD), hormonal contraception (the pill or the Depo Provera injection), barrier methods (condoms), emergency contraception, fertility awareness and permanent contraception (vasectomy and tubal ligation. We will get into more details on subsequent articles.
Benefits of family planning.
The benefits of family planning are significant to the socio-economic well-being of an individual, family and society at large. These are: improving maternal health and child survival, reducing the number of abortions overall, especially unsafe abortion, preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS, empowering women, promoting social and economic development and security and protecting the environment. Currently, 500 million women in the developing world are using some form of family planning, thereby preventing 187 million unintended pregnancies, 60 million unplanned births, 105 million induced abortions, 2.7 million infant deaths, 215,000 maternal deaths and 685,000 children from losing their mothers due to pregnancy-related deaths each year.
“It’s long been accepted as fact that the availability of family planning services saves lives. Where women have access to these services, children and families are healthier, and society at large benefits.” ~ Martha Plimpton