Family planning cited as crucial economic catalyst

APPROPRIATE family planning initiatives can be a very effective strategy for improving livelihoods and accelerating the country’s economic growth.

This was said in Dar es Salaam yesterday by the Tanzania Communication and Development Centre (TCDC) Project Implementation Manager, Mr James Mlali. “When you have a large family to fend for, it is obvious that much of the income will be spent on providing them basic needs, meaning that other areas won’t be addressed,” he said.

He explained, furthermore, that most productive people in rural areas were women; now, when a mother is consistently engaged in production activities, and doesn’t pursue family planning methods, feeding the members becomes a big problem and poverty within the family increases.

Mr Mlali furthermore stressed that the government should acknowledge the importance of family planning, lack of which fuelled poverty, adding that it should also ensure that population increase and that of current resources and the economic were matched.

Despite various government initiatives which are made to boost health sector in the country, there had been challenges affecting the supply of contraceptives as well as inadequate health centres for providing family planning services, particularly in rural areas, he said.

Mr Mlali pointed out, too, that the challenges were due to low budgets for family planning initiatives, leading to failure by many people to apply family planning methods, most of whom were in rural areas.

He said that they had been pushing increases in health sector budgets, specifically on family planning, which he stressed was key to attainment of the envisaged industrialisation status goal.

“We can have a high population, but as a country are we producing enough to cater for the population? For example, do graduates get jobs upon completion of their studies?,” Mr Mlali explained.