The COVID-19 lockdown has jeopardized India’s population control measures, raising fears of a population explosion.
In an interview with THE WEEK, Poonam Muttreja, executive director of Population Foundation of India (PFI), an organization that works for the betterment of disadvantaged women in India, talks about the scale of the problem. “The lack of family planning services, together with the limited supply of contraceptives, will lead to an increase in the number of unplanned births, abortions and additional deliveries,” says Muttreja.
Muttreja suggests a number of ways to deal with the crisis of population growth. In states like UP, efforts are already being made to tackle the impending crisis which includes the distribution of condoms and contraceptives.
Excerpts from the interview:
There are reports that the lockdown could lead to millions of unwanted pregnancies around the world. In India, the family planning program came to a halt during the lockdown and lack of access to contraceptives made the situation worse. What is their likely impact on India’s population control program?
A recent study by the Population Council suggests that according to trends for 2019, around 80 lakh condoms and 40 lakh pills are generally distributed per month, while around 15 lakh monthly abortions take place, with the months of March, April and May being peak seasons. However, as a result of the lockdown, family planning and reproductive health services have been significantly reduced, which has restricted access to services for people.
An India-specific study, which used data on the supply of family planning (FP) clinical services and sales of over-the-counter (OTC) contraceptives in 2018 and 2019, estimated that the lockdown will result in around 25 .63 million couples not have access to contraceptives in India. There will be a loss by method of 693,290 sterilizations, 975,117 intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUCD), 587,035 doses of injectable contraceptive (IC), 23.08 million cycles of oral contraceptive pills (OCP), 926,871 pills contraceptives (ECP) and 405.96 million condoms.
How can India address the unforeseen demographic problem that has emerged due to COVID-19?
UNICEF has estimated that around 20 million babies will be born in India between March and December 2020, since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.
Today we are a young country with a third of our population in the 15-34 age group. Ensuring that the reproductive needs of this young population are met at all times is imperative to ensure that the advances made by India’s family planning programs over the decades are not undone. For the nation as a whole, unplanned pregnancies during the lockdown and pandemic period could become a huge liability that the country will have to bear in the future.
The government has included family planning services among the essential services to be provided during COVID-19, which is a welcome step. In the future, the availability of self-care methods like condoms, oral contraceptive pills, emergency contraceptive pills, in pharmacies should be ensured. ASHAs and other health workers at the community level should be supported to ensure continued access to family planning services.
The Foundation for Reproductive Health Services recently released a report that sheds light on how COVID-19 has led to unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The situation is alarming. How does the Population Foundation of India (PFI) plan to handle this?
PFI is not only doing its part to support the government in the fight against the COVID-19 crisis, but is also generating evidence to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of health services, including family planning.
PFI, in collaboration with Facebook, developed content creations and messaging around COVID 19 for the Government of India’s MyGov page. This is to ensure that social media users have accurate, verified and updated information about COVID. PFI also works directly with state governments, the Department of Health and Family Welfare, and civil society organizations working at the local level to develop and share information materials as widely as possible.
As the secretariat of Advocating Reproductive Choices (ARC), a coalition of civil society organizations working in sexual and reproductive health, PFI is coordinating a field study to assess the availability of family planning services in selected districts from Bihar. The assessment will help to strategically engage with district and state officials to fill gaps.
PFI is also assessing the impact of COVID-19 on the availability of services and commodities in public health facilities as well as awareness among frontline workers, through a study in five states (UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Odisha).
Additionally, PFI is conducting rapid telephone assessment with adolescents and young people in three states (Rajasthan, UP and Bihar) to understand the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding COVID-19 and its impact on them.