PopCom to intensify family planning in remote areas

The Commission on Population will strengthen its drive on Family Planning in far-flung areas to widen the scope of its programs and services.

This is one of the advocacies that PopCom will be pushing with the celebration of the Family Planning Month in August with “Men as Partners in Maternal Health” as the focus of the celebration.

Aside from its drive in far-flung areas, PopCom will be pushing intensively the “Responsible Parenting Movement”, encouraging responsible parenting as a way of life and key to attainment of sustainable human development.

With the said movement, PopCom plans to educate at least 4.2 million couples nationwide between 2007 and 2010. It will have 10 classes per barangay involving 10 couples per class to be conducted in 42,000 barangays nationwide.

Classes on responsible parenting are seen to mobilize the critical mass of parents who will compose the Responsible Parenting Movement.

There will also be post-Responsible Parenthood Movement activities to sustain the gains of the class. These activities include coaching/mentoring through home visits to the Natural Family Planning users of the class.

The RPM is in response to President Arroyo’s directive for the Department of Health and PopCom to formulate and carry out an aggressive and systematic strategy to promote responsible parenting and natural family planning.

PopCom regional director Leo Rama said that while people are familiar with the use of artificial methods like condoms, vasectomy and tubal ligation, they cannot identify the types of scientific natural family planning methods.

“The core of the plan is the grassroots campaign to bring the program as close to the people as possible,” he said.

In the program, there will be a Barangay Responsible Parenting Movement Group and a City or Municipal Responsible Parenting Movement Group.

The BRPMG will be composed of barangay health workers and other community based volunteers. The members of the BRPMG will recruit married couples for the RPM classes.

The city or municipal responsible parenting movement team, on the other hand, is to be created by the mayors composed of city and population health officers who will train members of the BRPMG.

Rama enjoins all provincial and city population offices to come up with activities for this year’s celebration in coordination with their local government executives. — Jasmin R. Uy/MEEV