By Sarwell Meniano/PNA
TACLOBAN CITY — The Commission on Population (PopCom) is eyeing to convince 4 million to 5 million couples to accept family planning methods in the next four years through the agency’s aggressive campaign.
The country’s family planning will need at least PHP1 billion every year to reach out to at least 1 million couples. PopCom executive director Juan Antonio A. Perez III is optimistic that President Rodrigo Duterte would support the appeal to further strengthen the program.
“Adding 1 million new acceptors of family planning in the country every year is something that has never been achieved in the past. The strategy is to talk to as many men and women as possible,” Perez told reporters in a press briefing here Tuesday.
Under the intensified family planning program, teams will be deployed to talk to about 3 million couples, citing studies that show three of every 10 married women need family planning.
“Last year, we talked to 1.2 million women and we were able to identify 250,000 of them who are in need of family planning. If we will talk to 3 million, we will achieve the new one million acceptors every year or about 65 percent of couples who need to adopt the methods,” Perez said.
The program targets to inform couples suffering from poverty, those who want to achieve ideal birth spacing, less educated couples, and those who want to stop having children.
Last year, Duterte signed Executive Order No. 71, renaming PopCom into the Commission on Population and Development and placing it under the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).
With this change, the PopCom chief also holds the position as NEDA undersecretary for population and development.
The directive is seen to strengthen the integration of population and development to increase the country’s economic growth as indicated in the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022, Perez said.
“On February 19, there will be a signing of a joint memorandum circular to create a national program on family planning managed by an undersecretary of the Department of Health (DOH) and NEDA. This is to unite both health and population-based endeavor,” he said.
“We will also ask for support from President Duterte to continue strengthening the family planning program by putting more resources into public planning both in the budget of DOH and PopCom,” Perez added.
For this year, family planning will be mainly supported through a PHP440-million funding from the DOH and PHP150 million from PopCom. The official expects that the central government will mobilize more resources to attain the target.
“If that happens, that means the fertility rate of women will go down from the current 2.7 to only two by 2022, which means that each woman will only have two children as desired. If we’re not able to reduce fertility rate right now, we will have to wait for another 10 years to achieve that,” he said.
Countries such as Japan and Korea that have achieved a fertility rate of 2.1 have seen economic development after 20 to 30 years, Perez added.
As of the end of 2018, the country had a population of 107 million and the figure is expected to reach 109 million this year.
“Reality is population will continue to grow and that means we need to generate more jobs, deliver social services, and provide necessary infrastructure,” Perez said.
About 2 million babies are added to the country’s population every year, or four times than the average 500,000 deaths annually.
