Population boom worries government

Published in Daily News on Thursday, 08 May 2014

Written by ORTON KIISHWEKO

TANZANIA needs to control the current population growth rate which hampers the fight against poverty and exerts pressure on existing resources, Family Planning Focal Person in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Mr Maurice Hiza, has said.

Speaking at a seminar for journalists in Dar es Salaam ahead of a government relaunch of a refocused programme on maternal health, the official said that calling for large families without adequate measures to guarantee the increased population of quality lives and employment will be a recipe for ‘a Tanzanian disaster’ in the long run.

President Jakaya Kikwete is expected to launch the programme tomorrow. Mr Hiza said yesterday that the current annual growth rate of 3 per cent, which is one of the highest in the world, does not correspond with the economic growth and cutting it would influence the direction of the fight against poverty.

He said such a sustained population growth rate has the ability to overwhelm existing public resources such as education, health and housing systems, among others.

The implication, he noted, is that it will have a bigger burden if its economic growth rate does not remain much higher than the rate of population growth. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Tanzania’s population is growing by 1.3 million people per year.

Presently at an estimated 44.5 million, it is projected to grow to 65 million in just 14 years from now. The national coordinator of safe motherhood at the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Dr Koheleth Wineni, also said that population growth has to correspond with the economic growth statistics.

This means that the population will exert pressure on the existing natural resources. He said that statistics show that families that are planned are far better off than those which are not.

He said that a similar development was playing out at the family level where some parents have produced more children than they can cater for in terms of education, health and social welfare.

Dr Georgina Msemo from the ministry said the Lake Zone is the worst performer in terms of contraceptives prevalence rate at 14 percent while the national average is 27 per cent.

She said that under a new programme, they would start a pregnant women’s registry and carry out census of the group with the aim of cutting maternal deaths For the first time in the current financial year, the government made a budgetary allocation from domestic resources for family planning activities in the 2013/2014 national budget.

The decision is based on the government’s goal to make Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) grow at more than three per cent annually so that the country attains a 60 per cent CPR by 2015.

The ministry has said Tanzania was committed to increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate to 60 per cent by 2015, exuding the government’s determination to increase family planning users from 2.1 million (2010) to 4.2 million by 2015.

Tanzania has continued to implement its National Family Planning Cost Implementation Programme (2010- 2015), which has set a Contraceptive Prevalence Rate goal of 60 per cent.

The international community convened in London, at a Family Planning Summit in 2012 to re-affirm its commitment to strengthen family planning services especially in developing countries.

Mr Hiza said the gathering provided an opportunity to take stock of progress in family planning, as well as determine how they could collectively mobilize the necessary resources for expanding access and method mix to those needing the services.

He said the Family Planning Summit, co-hosted by the UK government, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with UNFPA had an ambitious resolve - to ensure an additional 120 million women in developing countries in the world, including Tanzania, enjoy access to life saving family planning information, services and supplies by the end of this decade.

The Summit pledged $4.6 billion that would go a long way to improving services and ensure access for 380 million women and girls in developing countries by 2020.

Posted in: