Govt urged to address population growth

 By EUNAR NOREEN KARATU 

IT is of national importance for individuals and families to have access to family planning because PNG’s population has grown from 3.8 million in 1990 to 7.8 million today.

Marie Stopes country director Maarteen van de Reep said that at the Sustainable Population Project launched in Port Moresby yesterday.

He said if nothing was done, the population would double in the next 20 years.

“This will mean it will become increasingly difficult for the government to maintain services and infrastructure for the rapidly growing population,” Reep said.

He said the Government had identified the potential risk to the country’s sustainable development which is featured in:

• the National Strategy for Sustainable Development;
• medium term development plan; and
• the National Population Policy.

“At Marie Stopes PNG, we are very proud to support the government in its effort to provide services to women and men who want to take control of and how many children they would like to have,” he said.

Reep said in the first two years of the Sustainable Population Project, Marie Stopes was able to provide that opportunity to 40,000 women and men in which the impacts include 36 maternal deaths prevented and over 400 children’s deaths averted.