Zimbabwe has attained its Family Planning target ahead of the 2020 deadline, Population Services Zimbabwe Country Director, Abebe Shibru has said.
Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) is a global partnership that supports the rights of women and girls to decide, freely, and for themselves, whether, when, and how many children they want to have.
Speaking at the Sexual Reproductive Health, Family Planning Project launch in Harare on Wednesday, Shibru expressed gratitude towards the achievements and determination shown by the government in attaining the FP2020 goal.
“We are very much proud of the achievements that have been made by the government of Zimbabwe in attaining the FP2020 goal ahead of the deadline,
“This achievement is because of the determination of the government and strong leadership being demonstrated by the Ministry of Health at all levels including Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council towards saving the life if women through the provision of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and family planning services,” said Shibru.
In the year 2017, Population Services Zimbabwe reached out to 400 000 women who received family planning and contraceptives services, which accounts to more than 25% of all women in Zimbabwe.
Despite Zimbabwe having a success story in attaining the FP2020 goal, there is still a big gap in accessing other remote communities and addressing the unmet need.
“There is still a big gap in accessing the undeserved communities and addressing the unmet need, access to long acting and permanent methods is still very limited nationwide signaling a continued lack of contraceptive choice,
“As such, the partnership with the Swedish Government through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) comes at an opportune time to intensify our FP program to bridge this gap in line with the government FP2020 strategic direction,” added Shibru.
The Swedish Government donated USD$8 million towards the project which will support more than 30 public rural health facilities to offer high quality Long Acting and Reversible Contraceptive Methods and Youth Friendly Services.
The partnership with the Swedish Government will enable women and girls to access menstrual hygiene information and services.
Officiating at the event, the First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa concurred that there is still limited uptake of long acting and permanent methods estimated at around 11% of modern contraceptive prevalence rate total.
