A new organisation christened as ‘Population Foundation- Northeast’ floated in the State with an aim to create awareness among people especially in the remote areas on family planning.
Formation of the new organisation was announced during a press conference at Guwahati Press Club here on Tuesday.
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The organisation has been formed with Dr Illias Ali as chairman, who is a member of the Committee for Population Policy, Government of Assam and a former professor of Surgery and head of the Department of Emergency Medicine of Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH).
Addressing the media persons here, Dr Ali said, “Poverty, illiteracy, insecurity and inaccessibility to birth control programmes of the Government are the root causes for the rampant population growth in the downtrodden sections of the community irrespective of their caste and religion.”
Dr Ali, while talking on family planning, said, “There is a perception in Islam that family planning is a red flag. Muslims are against adoption of family planning measures. But at present, in some regions of the State, people have become aware to some extent about family planning.”
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Ali further said, “Adoption of family planning scheme by the Government is not the solution. The basic need is to educate the children residing in the remote areas across the State. Dissemination of information by making various facilities available in the remote areas across the State is the need of the hour to control the population growth.”
“If the people residing in remote areas can have access to proper education, medical facilities and other communication facilities, probably the statistics of population growth in the State as well as in the country would have become different,” he said.
While stressing on infant mortality rate, Dr Ali said, “There is a need to control the infant mortality rate which is 44 per 1000 in Assam as per the report published by the Niti Aayog in 2016.”
Meanwhile, Dr Ali also emphasised on control of maternal mortality rate, which is 237 per one lakh in Assam during the year 2014-16 as per the reports published by theNiti Aayog.
According to report of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), which was published earlier this year, the total fertility rate of India is 2.2 which is 0.1 unit more than the stabilization point (2.1).
Talking on fertility rate, Dr Ali said, “The fertility rate of Assam is also 2.2.”
“The State has been facing imbalanced proportion between population and land which would become a serious problem in near future if family planning awareness programmes are not organised in the remote areas,” he said.
He also appealed to the people and other organisations to take the matter seriously and work for that.
Senior journalist Bedabrat Bora, who was also present during the press conference, informed that the organisation would hold awareness campaign across the State soon.
Former professor of Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT-G), Abu Nasar Saied Ahmed was also present during the press conference.