KATHMANDU: The 6th National Family Planning Day is being marked today with the theme ‘Teenagers’ participation: ensuring family planning services’.

The day is marked to ensure that individuals and couples are able to fulfill their reproductive needs by using appropriate family planning methods based on informed choice.

Family planning can reduce unmet need for contraceptives and unintended pregnancy which ultimately helps to improve maternally and child health, empowers women by allowing them to invest more in their children and earn wages outside the home.

In addition, it also helps communities and country to boost economic growth by expanding healthy and skillful labor force and allowing them to invest more money in school, health care, and infrastructure development.

The National Family Planning Program helps to improve the quality of life of people and develop a nation. Family planning is central to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and it is a key factor in reducing poverty.

Many women in Nepal are not able to use safe and effective family planning methods due to lack of access to information or services and support from their partners or communities.

Government of Nepal is working to promote family planning by ensuring a steady, reliable supply of quality contraceptives; strengthening national health systems; advocating for policies supportive of family planning; and gathering data to support this work.

Family planning has long been considered a priority in Nepal and the majority of contraceptives and other commodities have been procured using government budget including pool funds. In recent years, however, there have been several constraints related to procurement, supply chain management, and inventory management which have led to a number of development partners’ direct support in these areas in order to sustain the momentum for family planning.

The Ministry of Health made a commitment to FP2020 in March 2015, just before the massive earthquake of 25 April 2015. The Government of Nepal committed to identify and address barriers to family planning, broaden the range of available contraceptives and improve the method mix, as well as increase the budget for family planning on a yearly basis by 7%.

Prior to signing off on the FP2020 commitment, the Ministry of Health had endorsed a five-year Costed Implementation Plan for Family Planning (2015-2020), which outlined the resources required for scaling up the family planning program and the commodity needs.

Despite progress over the past 10 years in Nepal, 24% of married women still have an unmet need for family planning. Only 15% of married women or girls aged 15-19 use a modern form of contraception. In Nepal, 17% of adolescent women age 15-19 are already mothers or pregnant with their first child.

Women in rural areas have an average of 2.9 children, compared to 2.0 children among women in urban areas. Women with no education have 1.5 more children than women who have graduated from high school. One in four married women in Nepal have an unmet need for family planning: 8% want to delay childbearing, while 16% want to stop childbearing.