Family Planning Methods | Use, Benefits, Side Effects

Family Planning Methods | Use, Benefits, Side Effects

Family planning

Family planning is conscious efforts of couples or individuals to control the number and spacing of birth. An experts committee (1971) of the WHO defined family planning as ‘a way of thinking and living that is adopted voluntarily upon the basis of knowledge, attitudes and responsible decisions by individuals and couples, in order to promote the health and the welfare of the family group and thus contributes effectively to the social development of a country’. Another expert committee defined and described family planning as following ‘family planning refers to practice that helps individuals or couples to attain objectives.

Benefits of Family Planning

• to avoid unwanted births,
• to bring about wanted births,
• to regulate the intervals between pregnancies,
• to control the time at which birth occurs in relation to the ages of the parent, and
• to determine the number of children in the family.
• the avoidance of unwanted pregnancies,
• limiting the number of births and proper spacing and timing births particularly the first and last in relation to the age of the mother.

Family planning by intervening in the reproductive cycle of women helps them to control the number, interval and timing of pregnancies and births and thereby reduces maternal mortality and morbidity and improves health. The health impact of family planning occurs primarily though.

Family planning has an important bearing on such major aspects as meeting demand for family planning, saving women’s lives, children’s lives, offering women choices, encouraging safer sex and reaching out to youths to maintain and promote their reproductive health. These are the most important ways; family planning benefits individuals and countries (UNFPA, 1999).

Contraceptives are the methods of family planning; they both limit and space the births. In narrow meaning contraception is understood as the method of limiting births but contraception enhances the choice of people and provides the opportunities for personality development. Contraception and family planning are now seen as human right-basic to human dignity. Contraception helps women to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and also prevents STDs and provides other health benefits. Modern contraceptives includes barrier methods like condoms, hormonal methods like pills, injectable or implants, intra-uterine devices (IUDs), and surgical sterilization.

Methods of Family planning

• Male Sterilization
• Female Sterilization
• Condom
• Pills
• Injectables
• Implants
• IUD
• Foam/jelly
• Traditional Method
• Periodic Abstinence
• Withdrawal

Side-Effects of Family planning

• Irregular Menstruation
• Weakness
• Leg Sculling
• Back-Pain
• Headache
• Pelvic Pain
• Over Bleeding

Family Planning in Nepal

Since its beginnings in the 1960s, Nepal’s family planning program has gained legitimacy on demographic grounds. Over the past four decades, family planning has been accorded an increasingly higher priority in successive development plan documents, and is today an important element of population policy and an essential component of reproductive health services.

The concept of family planning was pioneered by the family planning association of Nepal (FPAN) and affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). FPAN was formed in 1985 as a voluntary social organization in Kathmandu with the mandate of making safe and effective family planning services available to those in need. Another NGO involved in contraception distribution is the Nepal Contraceptive Retail Sales Company (NCRSC). The principle objectives of the NCRSC have been the promotion, sale, and distribution of health and family planning products through commercial channels. In more recent years, family planning services have also been provided through a network of physicians in the private sector.

The government supported family planning program was established in 1968. Services were initially limited to urban areas within the Katmandu valley and expanded in subsequent years to other areas of the country. The aim of the program has been to make family planning and maternal child health services available to all of Nepal’s fertile couples, and to encourage an increasing number of these couples to practise contraception to achieve their desired number and spacing of children.

Family planning can prevent one-quarter to one third of all maternal deaths. It can also significantly improve the health and welfare of those who survive, and make it possible for them to give better care to their children. ( UNFPA, 1999)

Population growth has already outpalced development efforts in many developing countries, leaving growing number of people without access to school, health care, clean water, and other, services. Increasing human demands are damaging natural resources base-land, water, air, forest-upon which all development depends. Rapid population growth is one of the main problems, to be solved, every where in the world. Increasing CPR is one of the effective methods of reducing population growth rate.