Pakistan’s public health crisis can be underscored with the fact that a mother dies every 20 minutes in Pakistan. While this is known to most policy makers and media, it hardly ever makes headlines. With an estimated population of 181.68 million people, Pakistan is the 6th most populous nation on earth and has a very high maternal and infant mortality rate.

These bleak facts were the focus of a two-day “Media Sensitisation Workshop on Population Explosion,” which ended on Sunday. The workshop arranged by the Communications Research Strategies (CRS) on behalf of the Advocacy for Population and National Advancement (APNA) advocacy campaign, was attended by journalists across the country to deliberate the role of media with regard to the population explosion phenomenon and its impacts.

Dr Shahnaz Shahid, a public health expert, spoke about maternal and child health.

Maulana Abdur Raheem Haqqani, a religious scholar, presented the Islamic perspective on family planning. His session titled “Is Contraception against Islam” detailed various Islamic teachings that stressed on the importance of family planning.

Former Ministry of Population Welfare director general Abdul Ghafar Khan provided an overview of the population welfare program and its successes and failures.

Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services (PIPS) Director Rashid Zaka engaged participants in a stimulating interactive session on how to highlight the population explosion and related issues such as maternal deaths, birth spacing and infant health. He said, “Reporting these issues to ensure optimum health and well being of mothers and infants through collective efforts at the household, community and policy levels is our goal that must be mutually shared by participants and the country at large.”

It is unfortunate that Pakistan ranks poorly on the Human Development Index (HDI) scale and is second only to Afghanistan in its infant mortality rate (IMR). The current scenario makes it seem unlikely that Pakistan will be able to achieve its Millennium Development Goal of achieving an IMR of below five, by 2015. Pakistan’s population is estimated to reach 300m by 2050 and this will expose millions of more mothers and families to the adverse effects of population growth.

‘APNA Pakistan’ is a national advocacy campaign which aims to generate sustained political will and commitment within the current and future governments for universal coverage of family planning services to manage population growth in the country.