DILI, 30 November 2022 (TATOLI)- World Health Organization (WHO) in Timor-Leste organized three days of WHO South-East Asia’s regional technical meeting on ‘Family Planning and Comprehensive Abortion Care to Accelerate the Reduction in Maternal Mortality in Timor-Leste.
The high-level meeting was attended by representatives of ten (10) member countries from the Southeast Asian region, such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, North Korea, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia. The meeting was held at the OKA Hudi-Laran building, Dili, this Wednesday.
Addressing the event, The President of the Republic and the Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. José Ramos Horta said that the family planning program will help reduce the number of mortality for mothers and Children in Timor-Leste.
Horta said Timor-Leste continues to obtain large family members with five and ten children in a family, saying it mostly affects women’s health and even contributes to a high mortality rate.
“Women should have space for childbirth, at least it should respond for 3 years child born space. It helps women and child lives able to have good health, therefore Family planning is helping a mother to provide sufficient nutritious meals for children to contribute to the child’s physical and mental growth,” said Horta.
Meanwhile, WHO Representative in TL, Arvind Mathur, stated that the meeting had the aim of bringing together experts from all member countries, negotiating and reviewing family planning program services, and making plans to cover unmet needs to face future challenges and reduce the number of child death.
“WHO is committed, to focusing on family planning program policies in Timor-Leste, by providing family planning services, using different contraceptive methods for families in preventing unplanned pregnancies,” he said.
WHO recommends, the distance to having children is three years, to focus on the growth and development of children for a thousand days because low and middle-income countries have about 94% maternal mortality.
“We must accelerate efforts to reduce this mortality rate, so this regional technical meeting brings together experts in the field of family planning on one platform to share their best practices, plan for the future, improve services and processes to reduce mortality in the region,” he added.
Arvind Mathur highlighted the importance of providing training to health workers to increase their knowledge about providing health services, especially family planning assistance.
Minister of Health, Odete Belo, said the 2020 demographic survey, indicated that every household is starting to be aware of participating in the family planning program. For example, every family had seven children, but now it’s reduced to four, so it has a positive change.
“After every family is confident of using the family planning program, parents have had the family plan. The information provided by health officials, these families wish to use various methods to distance themselves from having children,” he said.
The high-level meeting was set to be finished on December 2, 2022.
Journalist: José Belarmino De Sá
Editor: Nelia B.
