Dr. Leticia Adelaide Appiah, NPC Executive Director
The Executive Director of National Population Council (NPC), Dr. Leticia Adelaide Appiah, has called for urgency in addressing population issues in the country.
According to her, addressing the negative trend of growth is important to avert the socio-economic consequences of bulging populations in the sub-region and, for that matter, Ghana.
Speaking exclusively with the Daily Statesman yesterday, she highlighted strategies to improve acceptance of family planning in Africa and Ghana.
“In resource constraint settings, the right health policy such as family planning contributes to improving macro-economic policies by keeping people healthy and productive in all spheres of life, from education to skill acquisition and employment,” she said.
Dr Adelaide Appiah added that to improve acceptance of family planning, two main approaches are critical. She cited advocacy and awareness creation as key ingredients needed to build support among key actors and decision-makers at all levels to overcome barriers to any healthy family planning campaign.
Secondly, he reiterated the need for implementation of a national communications campaign among all sectors at the national, district and community levels on the critical role of family planning in poverty reduction.
She emphasised government has the prime responsibility for the provision of policies and programmes aimed at harnessing the human capital.
“Consequently, this will improve the quality of life of its citizens, and make the nation a prosperous one. Population is every nation’s most valuable resource, but for it to be fit for the purpose, it needs to be transformed into capital through systematic and timely investments in adequate nutrition, health and education,” she added.
Fundamental
Highlighting on family planning acceptance, he cited Rwanda which treats family planning as an empowerment and economic intervention.
“So, they put a focus on family planning not as a controlling measure, but as health intervention for mother and baby, and that what Rwanda has done it through sheer political will,” she noted.
The Executive Director of NPC said population issues are so fundamental to development that history chronicles initiatives that indicate how economies had developed regulating population explosion through effective reproductive health sensitisation programmes.
“Japan was in the same rapid population state after the Second world war. They had a problem with high fertilities, and their experts thought everything [as solution] but population and family planning. But then when they did the elimination or analysis about agriculture, industrialisation and everything, they finally realised the need to have a natural population growth, which means that the births and deaths should match,” she said.
According to her, the deaths and births can only match in two places, whether high fertility and high mortality, which is not sustainable, or low fertility and low mortality, which is more sustainable.
She explained that because the land size in Japan was like that of California, and “they realised that their population could not keep expanding, they had to choose between tight immigration laws or annexing other lands, both of which were not sustainable”.
“It was when Japan came to the realisation that a national focus of national planning is really the way to go that everything else will fall in harmony and propel across their nation,” she noted.
She concluded that it time, therefore, to emulate Singapore, Thailand, and, most recently, Rwanda in making the best out of the country’s socio-economic circumstances.
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