Recommendations on population welfare to be utilized: Minister
By Adnan Rafique

ISLAMABAD—Federal Minister for Population Welfare Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain Tuesday stressed the need for making concerted efforts to involve recommendations finalised durining a two-day seminar to effectively cope with population-related issues.
Addressing a concluding session of seminar “Best practices for scaling up reproductive health and family planning programmes,” the minister said a committee should be formed to work out a comprehensive strategy for incorporating the proposals and recommendations of the moot in which a large number of national and international researchers participated.
Ch. Shahbaz said various development projects in developing countries including South Asian region were incapacitated due to prevailing of high population growth rate.
Enumerating various issues affecting national progress the minister said, to effectively check the run-away population, improvement in reproductive health and family planning was the most time tested tool. Otherwise, he added “it can adversely affect the national social sector indicators including neo-natal and maternal mortality,”
He said the government had succeeded in bringing into force the effective mechanism by incorporating the public-private sectors facilities. Reaffirming government’s commitment, the minister said targets set in National Population Policy and Millennium Development Goals will be achieved soon.
He hoped that Population Welfare Programme would facilitate various other ongoing activities focussing on improving quality of life, empowerment of women, promoting gender equity and equality and fostering public-private partnership.
He emphasised upon the importance of this vital issue facing various countries, adding government was alive to the situation and would achieve the population stabilization goal by the year 2020. He said, through these efforts, preventive and diagnostic services would be available under one roof.
He underscored the need for close cooperation by all the stakeholders to get the desired results.