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| Sunday, 28 July 2002 |
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UNFPA hails Sri Lanka ; World population, zooming to a new high by Carol Aloysius United Fund for Population activities (UNFPA) representative Som Pudasaini singled out Sri Lanka as the main success story of the activities initiated by the UNFPA to curb the enormous rise in the world Population. "Sri Lanka has done an `excellent job' in bringing down its population growth to almost replacement level - a unique achievement considering the fact that the island has such a low per capita income and an ailing economy". He made this observation at a media briefing held at the Health Education Bureau, Colombo recently, in connection with the World Population Day which fell early, this month. While explaining how poverty, population and development are linked and what action was initiated by the UNFPA, he applauded the fact that the present population growth in Sri Lanka which is around 1.2 was achieved in a comparatively short time. "The ideal number of children in a family should be two children, at the most to reach replacement level. Yet this cannot be achieved overnight. It would take at least thirty years or more to do so. But Sri Lanka has achieved this fait accompli in a short time," he said. "Yet slowing down the population alone will not solve all our problems, he warned. "Because when you have fewer children, you will have more elderly persons since they are now living longer, the average age span for a man being approximately 70 and for a woman 74. Now ten percent of our population comprises elderly persons over 60 years. In the next 20 years the figure will double", he predicted. "And that means? More inputs will be needed for housing, social welfare and of course for a different set of illnesses . Today your country is fully geared to meet the needs of a very young population - children. But in the next few years the entire policy and infra structure will have to change and be oriented towards the elderly". Som Pudasaini said that as we celebrate this day, our global population is on an upward spiral at 6.2 billion to date.The world marked its first billion in global population in 1887 and its second billion forty years later in 1927. Thirty three years on the population had soared to its 3rd billion and just 14 years later to its fourth. From then, within a period of less than three decades it had climbed to an all time high of 6 billion, he said. This enormous rise in population signify in terms of the economic, social , cultural and natural resources of the world's nations that while the richer and more developed nations continue to flourish, the poorer nations which comprise more than 2/3rds of the world's population become poorer, less educated, and more unhealthy - with much less resources for any kind of development compared to their more affluent counterparts in the rest of the world, he pointed out. The UNFPA spokesman further observed that while the message of population and Reproductive Health had filtered through to the vast majority of the people in Sri Lanka there still remained pockets of communities who had not got the message or had wrong notions about it. They included Adolescents, women in Free Trade zones, Migrant workers, women living in conflict areas and people living in slums. "So our efforts in the next 5-10 years should be focused on these groups to create an awareness on their needs. He added that the role of women in stabilising the population should not be underestimated and that it required team effort on the part of the wife and husband to reach the goal of replacement level in population. Illegal abortion was another issue he touched on referring to the fact that there were between 750 to 1000 illegal abortions taking place each day resulting in lasting health problems among the victims. Dr. A.T.P.L. Abeykoon, director, population division reiterated the fact that a predominantly elderly population on one hand and a rising adolescent population on the other would give rise to new problems that had to be tackled in the future albeit the problem of population growth had more or less been solved, due to its sharp drop in recent years. Dr. Latha Hapugoda, Health Education Bureau and Medical Officer Dr. Kanthi Ariyaratne of the HEB also spoke. |
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