Politicians and health service providers are working to increase access to family planning services. A fresh endeavour is taking place in Papua New Guinea to boost access to family planning services. According to Australian Doctors International, PNG's maternal mortality rate of 733 per 100,000 births is the worst in the Pacific region.
It is also estimated that over half of the adult population cannot gain access to family planning assistance. Earlier this month Prime Minister Peter O'Neill told parliament correcting misconceptions about contraception was vital for managing population growth and reducing maternal mortality. "Mr Speaker, these implants can be removed any time, when they want to start up a family, and the young women are going to be fertile enough to have children,” Prime Minister Hon. Peter O’Neill said. Prime Minister Hon. Peter O’Neill said in the Parliament that it is not something that is implanted so you will be sterile forever. “Mr Speaker, we want to have population growth in the country but sustainable population growth,” Prime Minister Hon. Peter O’Neill told the house in one of its Parliament sittings. Marie Stopes International is one organization which provides a range of sexual and reproductive health services in the country. The director of services for Marie Stopes in PNG, Edith Kariko, said "stigma and lack of education needs to be overcome". "I totally agree with the politicians that have mentioned that stigma is a challenge for us," she said. "In a country like Papua New Guinea there is a lot of cultural diversity and beliefs that come along with it, as well as religious beliefs, therefore you also have those challenges individually when it comes to making a choice,” Edith Kariko said. Ms Kariko says increasing access, developing better suited plans for individuals and reducing the frequency of visits to clinics are crucial in the long term. "Usually on coming back women cannot access service or those services are no longer there," she said. Edith Kariko said so we’ve found that to be a problem, but with the use of implant technology that has lengthened the three-month period to four or five years. Comments are closed.
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