BANGKOK, Thailand – Zimbabwe is keen to bolster steps that underpin the centrality of family planning in health services and is forging ahead with ensuring universal access to contraceptive, sexual and reproductive healthcare services as a key strategy for eradicating poverty.
This was said by Vice President and Minister of Health and Child Care Dr Constantino Chiwenga on arrival here for this year’s edition of the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) to be held in the city of Pattaya, Southeast of the capital, Bangkok.
VP Chiwenga will join other global health leaders, health practitioners and economists from up to 125 countries and his delegation is hoping to tap from global best practices for home polishing as well as giving its voice to efforts to improve global family planning and reproductive health approaches.
He said family planning and quality reproductive health services were key pillars of a thriving health system to which Zimbabwe was a strong proponent.
Against this background, VP Chiwenga said Zimbabwe was hoping to use the ICPF to step up its family planning and reproductive health strategy towards the dictates of an upper middle-income economy as espoused by President Mnangagwa under Vision 2030.
“The importance of this international conference we have come to attend is that it is dealing with population and family planning,” he said.
“The issue of population around the world is a thorny issue which has to be handled well and it is combined with family planning. We would also be looking at the issue of how the population is balancing so we want to measure ourselves and compare with what is happening the world over.
“We have had tremendous improvement in the control of maternal deaths and providing quality family planning in the last five years.
“We want to come to a point where we have zero or very minimum deaths at birth and this is why are here. The issues of population growth or lack thereof, are far reaching. They are also going to help in how you are going to plan your economic development.
“In the case of Zimbabwe, our growth has been very slow for the past 10 years and we are also looking at that critically.”
The ICPF brings together governmental health leaders, researchers, health practitioners, economists among other important players as they seek to find solutions in ensuring universal access to family planning and access to reproductive health services.
Zimbabwe’s participation comes at a time when the Second Republic, as directed by President Mnangagwa, is re-jigging all facets of people’s lives in pursuit of improving the populace’s lives per the dictates of Vision 2030.
The family unit is thus right at the core of the President’s vision of leaving no place and no one behind in the development of the country.
The face-to-face interaction under the ambit of ICPF comes on the back of a Covid-19 induced four-year hiatus with the last having been held in Kigali, Rwanda.
This year’s conference runs from November 14 to 17.
“The International Conference on Family Planning has convened the global development community around a shared vision of universal access to family planning,” notes the ICPF.
“(This is a) network of advocates, researchers and scientists, community and government leaders, health practitioners, economists, conveners, civil society members, and young people . . . We are joined by the belief that everyone deserves access to family planning services and products, no matter what,” notes a promotion on the conference. – The Herald
