Support family planning to control population: Kase

National

By HELEN TARAWA
HEALTH Secretary Pascoe Kase has told a meeting of department heads that family planning and population control werecritical to the delivery of health services.
He said during the quarterly departmental heads meeting on Friday that the population must be a critical political agenda at this time.
“The population is moving so fast that the demand on health services, education and other state services (increases). (But) the kind of budget and other intuitions that trigger those services are not there to meet the population needs,” he said.
“Family planning must be supported. We must make sure that we control our population. It’s something that we must talk about. Our country today is different from that of 40 years ago. The population has grown and the need for medicine and healthcare is increasing.
“If we are not getting funding, health functional grant to the frontline, our people will continue to get sick and the demand for medicines will always increase.”
Kase suggested that some bodies such as the National AIDS Council could have some of its functions absorbed into the department.
“We have to think critically about some of the offices established during the good times when we had a lot of money. This time, its critical time to cut down so that other important service delivery agencies of government are not affected.”