While nearby countries that implemented successful birth control programs are now asking their citizens to produce more babies, a congressman is seeking the intensified implementation of the Reproductive Health Law.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, citing the United Nations Children’s Fund report showing a significant reduction in maternal and infant mortality in the Philippines, said the reduction is “partly attributable to the passage and implementation of the Reproductive Health Act since December 2012.”
China, that used to allow only one child per couple, now encourages families two children while Singapore has junked its two-child policy after both suffered a continuous and what is feared to be irreversible population imbalance.
In China, the birth rate fell from 37 per thousand to 20 per thousand after the government instituted the one-child policy.
In addition improved health case resulted in a decline in infant mortality from 227 per thousand births in 1949 to 53 per thousand in 1981.
Singapore had a similar experience and is now encouraging couples to have “three if you can afford it.”
Lagman said the Unicef-led United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation Report showed that infant mortality in the country decreased by almost half in 2018 or 40 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 22 deaths in 2018.
More Filipino children have also survived past five-years-old, with deaths dropping to 63,000 in 2018 from 113,000 in 1990, Lagman, principal author of the RH Law or RA 10354, added.
The report, he said, also disclosed that fewer Filipino mothers died from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications at 121 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2017 down from 160 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000.
“There will be more positive outcomes if the law is fully implemented with adequate funding and stronger political will by the implementors,” Lagman said.
Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia lamented during the proposed 2020 budget briefings that the country’s family planning and population program is underfunded, Lagman said.
In a letter to the Committee on Appropriations, Pernia and Executive Director Juan Antonio A. Perez of the Population Commission requested augmentation for the funding on family planning in the amount of P1,100,000,000 under POPCOM alone.
To complement the RH Law, President Rodrigo Duterte issued Executive Order 12 on Jan. 9, 2017 to achieve zero unmet need for modern contraceptives.