The government of Rwanda with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has launched 2030 commitments for family planning. The new commitments that were launched on Thursday, April 28, shall replace Family Planning 2020 commitments which officials say needed to be revamped. “The population has increased, new contraceptive methods are available and there are many more changes in society today. Hence, we also need to update our commitments and strategies that we use to tackle maternal deaths, poverty and unintended pregnancies among other issues,” clarified Dr. Tharcisse Mpunga, State Minister in charge of Primary Healthcare. Results of the previous commitments scaled up the uptake of contraception from 53 to 63 percent from 2015 to 2020, for those using any form of contraceptive method, and increased users of modern contraceptive methods from 48 to 58 percent in the same period. “With these new commitments, we want to drive up those using modern contraceptive methods up to 65 percent by 2030,” announced Minister Mpunga. He stressed how the move is beneficial for Rwandans as it curbs down infant mortality rate, stunting, unwanted pregnancies, poverty and promotes gender equality. The five commitments that are going to guide national family planning efforts till 2030 include: Commitment 1: Expanding strategies for family planning awareness raising, to address gaps in knowledge, attitude and behaviors on family planning and to increase the total demand for family planning among community members including men, women and young people in Rwanda. Commitment 2: Improve access to quality family planning services by increasing the number of family planning services delivery points, and number of skilled healthcare providers towards increasing family planning uptake by 2030. Commitment 3: Expand the available contraceptive method mix at all levels of family planning service delivery points by introducing new family planning methods. Commitment 4: Linking evidence-based programming for interventions with policy development and strategy formulation by conducting studies to inform policies, strategy formulation and evidence-based programming for high impact interventions. Commitment 5: By 2030, the government of Rwanda will increase domestic resources to finance family planning interventions from the current budget allocation. Busting myths Commenting on the above initiative, the UNFPA Country Representative Kwabena Asante-Ntiamoah dismissed biases surrounding family planning in different societies. “Access to family planning services is a global issue; it is not linked to abortion, that is a wrong narrative used by plenty of people! Rather, family planning is a voluntary aspect for all individuals to make free decisions on what type of life they want to live,” he noted. He added that family planning efforts are among the drivers of change in terms of economy, education and socio-economic development and promised to work with the government to boost commitments at the policy level, strategies and commodities. During the launch, a married couple testified on the impacts of family planning in their union. Because of the importance they attached to family planning, the couple shared how they had to go through thick and thin to stick to the services and make them work. According to them, they agreed to use family planning pills and syringes but these had many side effects to the woman, and so the husband decided to step in and went for vasectomy. To back the above commitments, the government vowed to increase the permanent staff in health facilities and scale up their capacities, work with more partners and increase the health budget among other initiatives.
