Empowering People, Developing Nationsand World Population Day 2017

COTABATO CITY -- The Commission on Population Regional Office XII
(POPCOM RO XII), in collaboration with the Population Division of the City
Social Welfare and Development Office - Cotabato will hold a joint regional and
city launching of World Population Day this July 11, 2017.

This event will be hosted by Barangay Rosary Heights
8 at RH8 Barangay Hall, Cotabato City.

Married couples of
reproductive age (MCRA), Barangay Service Point Officers (BSPO), Barangay and
City Officials and staff, POPCOM 12 staff and City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) staff will
participate in this joint city and regional launching of the World Population
Day Celebration. All LGUs in the region, spearheaded by the Population
Divisions and Offices will hold simultaneous activities for this event.

With the theme Family Planningand Empowering People,
Developing Nations (Pagpaplano ng Pamilyaand Lakas ng sambayanan, kaunlaran ng
pamayanan). This year’s celebration aims to strengthen the implementation of
family planning.

POPCOM Executive Director
Juan Antonio A. Perez III, MD stressed that Investing in Family Planning (FP)
is investing in the health and rights of women and couples worldwide. These
investments also yield economic and other gains that can propel development
forward and are critical to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development and its accompanying 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Together with our LGU partners, we are intensifying
regional efforts in synergy with the Department of Health RO 12, Family
Planning program. We intend to cover all women who want less children or better
spacing between childbirths, but have difficulty accessing services to modern
family planning methods, Director Edwin M Quijano of PopCom-12 said on the implementation of Family Planning program in the region. We are bridging this gap by conducting responsible
parenthood and family planning classes to give them correct information and refer
them to service providers should they decide to use modern family planning
methods, This year’s World
Population Day, July 11, coincides with the London Family Planning Summit, the
second meeting of the consortium of donors and stakeholders that make up the
FP2020 Family Planning 2020 initiative, which aims to expand access to
voluntary family planning to 120 million additional women by 2020.

In 2015,
approximately 12.7million adolescent girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in
developing countries had an unmet demand for family planning. In this same age group in developing countries, an
estimated 14.5 million girlsbecome mothers every year.

The issuance of the Executive
Order 12 by President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines aims to intensify and accelerate
the implementation of critical actions necessary to attain and sustain zero
unmet need for modern family planning for all poor households by 2018 and
beyond. It also enjoins all local
government units to accelerate mechanisms and strategies to attain the said
purpose through the strict implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and
Reproductive Health (RPRH) Law.

Under the Executive Order, Two (2) million of the poorest women
with unmet need will be provided modern family planning services by 2018. The rest of the unmet need should be served
by 2022 to achieve Zero Unmet Need for Modern Family Planning.

This unmet need among married women of reproductive age (MWRA) in
the region is identified through the RP-FP classes, a demand generation activities
that POPCOM RO XII with the LGU Population Offices is actively implementing in
the region. The DOH also simultaneously conducts house to house surveys to also
identify unmet need. Unmet need as defined in EO 12 is couples and women who
are fecund and sexually active and want to limit or space their children but
are not using any modern method of contraception.

The observance
of the World Population Day started in 1989 where the Governing Council of the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recommended that 11th of July be observed as
World Population Day. An outgrowth of the Day of Five Billion, marked on July 11, 1987, the Day seeks to focus attention on the urgency and
importance of population issues, particularly in the context of overall
development. The Day was first marked on 11 July 1990 in more than 90 countries.