Uganda: Family Planning Will Save Mothers and Children

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Kampala — FAMILY planning programmes started in developing countries in the 1960s. Originally the rationale for promoting family planning was to reduce rapid population growth in order to match the resources with the population numbers.

Many countries adopted policies and programmes supporting contraception. International funding for these programmes increased from $168m in 1971 to $512m in 1985. As a result, the proportion of married women using a contraceptive method rose from less than 10% to about 60% between 1960 and 2000 and the average number of births per woman dropped from six to about three. But these figures varied significantly among the regions, with Sub-Saharan Africa with lowest contraceptive use (22%) and highest fertility rate (5.5) in the world.

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