2018 WORLD POPULATION DAY: FAMILY PLANNING IS A HUMAN RIGHT

The World Population Day (WPD) is a United Nations annual event which focuses attention on the urgency and importance of population issues to development and wellbeing of the people and a sustainable society.

World Population Day 2018 theme ‘FAMILY PLANNING IS A HUMAN RIGHT’ was derived from the 50th anniversary of the “Tehran Proclamation” where for the first time family planning was proclaimed as a human right. The Proclamation was made on 13 May 1968 at the conclusion of the United Nations International Conference on Human Rights that “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children.”

The Adolescent 360 Project in collaboration with the National Population Commission (NPopC) and other partners, carried out an outreach on Friday 13th and Saturday 14th July 2018 as part of this year’s celebration.

How best do we mark the Theme:

Community mobilisers were engaged and branded to mobilise adolescent girls to Mararaba PHC. We had the Service providers from the facility join the reach out effort as well. Women turn away from modern Family Planning due to attached cost. It was wonderful seeing married adolescent come out in their numbers to access methods. 55 women were served with modern Family Planning methods, out of these, 20 girls were aged 18 – 19! Yay!!! On the whole it was a beautiful Outing.