The Population Foundation of India (PFI) advocates for women's empowerment in reproductive choices and aims to improve access to quality family planning services. Significant unmet needs for contraception persist, with 32 million women lacking adequate access, contributing to high maternal mortality rates. PFI calls for increased government investment in health and family planning, targeting improvements in contraceptive choices and service quality.

1. Alok Vajpeyi, Population Foundation of India
December 7, 2015
Access to Contraception

2. Population Foundation of India (PFI)
A national non-government organization leading policy
advocacy efforts and working as a think tank on population
issues in the country. Founded by JRD Tata in 1970.

3. We Envision An India Where:
1. Women are empowered to decide on when and who to marry
2. Couples make informed choices about whether, when and how many
children to have, and which contraceptive measures to use
3. Families (are able to) access and seek quality health care

4. PFI in Diverse Roles
Donor Agency
awarding grants using Core Funds to NGOs;
corporate/private sector
Implementing Agency
receiving grants from select donors on issues of
mutual interest and organisational priority
Advocate
with Central and State governments for policy
advocacy

5. PFI Work
• Community Action for Health
 Secretariat for Advisory Group on Community Action
formed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
• Urban health: provided technical assistance to
national and state governments
• Social and behaviour change communication: Main
Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon, a flagship initiative
• Small grants on Family Planning/Reproductive
Health (FP/RH) to NGOs
• Scaling up of successful pilots
• Advocacy on FP/RH issues
 Secretariat for Advocating Reproductive Choices

6. Repositioning Family Planning
PFI’s key focus areas
1. Delay age at marriage
2. Delay age at first pregnancy
3. Promote spacing between births and choice of
contraceptive methods
4. Improve the quality in care of family planning
and reproductive health programmes
5. Prevent sex selection
6. Promote non-coercive practices and policies
6

7. Context : Access to Contraceptive Choices
• Close to 50% women are in the reproductive age
• 32 million women’s need for family planning are not
met (total 20.5%, spacing 13.3% and limiting 7.2%)
• Current use of modern family planning methods
(56%); Contraception use is the lowest among
women from ST (48%) followed by OBC (54%) and SC
(55%).
• Over 6 lakh abortions recorded in 2013-14, majority
of these result from a lack of contraceptive access
and use

8. • Total Fertility Rate: 2.3
• Desired Fertility Rate: 1.9
 Both women and men want to have fewer children
 69% of women and 73% of men 15-49 years
consider 2 or less to be the ideal number of
children
What people want
8
INDIA ACCOUNTS FOR 15%
OF ALL MATERNAL DEATHS
WORLDWIDE

9. Why are families not able to
have the desired number of children ?
 Limited access and choice to family planning methods
 Poor quality of family planning and reproductive health
services
 High infant mortality (IMR: 40)
 Poor status of women
9

10. Contraceptive choices in India
10
37
1
3
2
5
8
Female
Sterilization
Male Sterilization
Oral Contraceptive
Pill
IUD
Condom
Traditional
methods
Contraceptive methods
56
44
Using any
method
Not using
any method
Contraceptive Use
Source: NFHS-3 2005-06

11. Young population matters
• Over 41 percent of all girls aged 19 in India are
married
• One in five young women aged 20-24 had their
first baby before they were 18 years of age
• one in eight young women had three children.
• The unmet need for spacing births is as high as
21 percent in this age group.

14. Quality of Care in family planning services
 Poor quality of family planning services
 Wide disparities and inequities in women’s access to
reproductive healthcare and limited choice
 Disregard for the dignity of women and violation of
quality and ethical norms
 Skewed Family Planning expenditure – 85% on on
female sterilization; only 1.45% on spacing methods

16. Way forward
Advocate for :
• Increase government spending on health to 3 % of GDP
• Ensure dedicated funding on family planning by center
• Monitor and Improve quality family planning services
• Increase investments in family planning by expanding
contraceptive choices with quality services
• To achieve the Government’s commitment of 48 million new
users of contraceptives by 2020, investment in family planning
needs to increase by at least 33%.

17. THANK YOU!!