Make long-acting contraceptives available to Rohingya women: FP 2020 chief to Bangladesh

The executive director of the FP 2020, Beth Schlachter, has called upon the Bangladesh government to make all family planning methods available to the Rohingya women so that they can choose.

The government is now providing short-acting methods such as condoms, pills and injectables. The long-acting reversible contraceptives include injections, intrauterine devices (IUDs) and subdermal contraceptive implants that provide effective contraception for a certain period until removal.

“I encouraged the government to open up the longer-acting methods,” Schlachter told bdnews24.com in an interview on Monday after her meeting with the government officials in Dhaka.

She said these women deserve the same kind of choice that any women anywhere in the world should have.

But she said the removal of those methods must be included in their return talks to Myanmar so that they can remove when they want.

“We need to make sure that if Rohingya women return, the removal services would be available where they move to,” she said, adding that family planning is entirely voluntary and rights-based approach.

She appreciated the government’s efforts to help the Rohingya people from giving shelter to ensuring basic needs and said many of the women heard about family planning services first from Bangladesh.

FP 2020 or Family Planning 2020 is a global community of partners working together to advance rights-based family planning.

The FP 2020 partnership was launched at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, with the goal of enabling 120 million additional women and girls in the world’s poorest countries to use modern contraceptives voluntarily.

Bangladesh also joined the global platform and made its commitment that includes reducing total fertility rate from 2.3 to 2.0 by 2021 and increase contraceptives prevalence rates from 62 percent to 80 percent by 2021.

The government in 2015 also pledged to reduce the unmet need for family planning from 12 percent to 7 percent by 2021.

To achieve those goals the government committed to mobilising $615 million from its development budget for the family planning programme which was 67 percent increase from the earlier allocation.

Beth Schlachter said the FP 2020 collects and analyses country-specific data to track each country’s family planning progress against its commitment.

But she understands that the Rohingya crisis has the potential to delay Bangladesh’s progress since the commitments were made at the time when they were not there.

“This happens in many countries. Even in Nepal earthquake hits just a few months after the commitment. They made their own determination that they will still stay behind their commitment because they still want to achieve those.”

She said she found Bangladesh government is also committed to their own programme.

“But there is nothing punitive about making a commitment and being part of the partnership. The context is complicated in many countries around the world. There is often disruption of services because of manmade disaster, earthquake, storms and that’s part of life. The goals remain the same,” she said.

She said Bangladesh is going to be included in the list of 24 ‘reference’ countries of the FP 2020.

“Bangladesh is making a heroic effort [for Rohingyas]. The international community needs more to be done,” she said.

She said, during her visit, she found for many women, “the idea of family planning is new to them, they did not know about it before. Some are coming to the healthcare for the first time in life.”

A UNFPA technical expert Dr Abu Sayed Mohammad Hasan who was also present during the interview told bdnews24.com that the UN agency would be ready to support to make long-acting methods available to them if the government wants.