A CAMPAIGN FOR SAFETY
The 2005 Ligtas Buntis campaign has sent health workers on a door-to-door mission to promote maternal and reproductive health
By Alysa Manzano
Correspondent
Amid criticisms of implementing a highly partisan reproductive-health policy, particularly in the areas of contraception and abortion, the Department of Health (DOH) has sent government health workers on a door-to-door family-planning and reproductive-health campaign.
Called Ligtas Buntis 2005, the program was launched in February. It is a nationwide campaign to address the needs of men, women, and couples to plan their families, which have not been met due to deficiencies in social structures and health-care systems coupled with problems of availability, accessibility, and affordability of family-planning services.
Based on the 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey, 17 percent of Filipino families have an unmet need for family planning, whether for spacing or for limiting.
Ligtas Buntis aims to help lessen the risks of having too many, too frequent, and dangerous pregnancies. It also arms government health workers to provide adequate and correct information on fertility awareness and various acceptable family-planning services to enable couples to make responsible decisions based on informed choices. Should they choose to avail themselves of any family-planning service, the couples would be advised by health workers could on when, how, and where to access it.
Five months after it was launched, Ligtas Buntis, the DOH reports, has gained ground in Western Visayas, reaching close to a million men and women or about 20 percent of the region's population of six million.
Aside from information on what's safe, what's natural, and what's modern, free condoms and pills were distributed. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provided the free contraceptives.
"Ambitious" campaign
The DOH reports that the campaign mobilized at least 150,000 health workers nationwide to reach its target of two million men and women of reproductive age. At least PhP150 million has been earmarked for the success of Ligtas Buntis.
Local government units have been given the hand to strategize the campaign to ensure widest coverage of services and maximum results.
Target of the campaign are women aged 15 to 49, men 15 years old and above, couples of reproductive age, pregnant women, postpartum women, and women who have had an abortion.
The DOH says that the Ligtas Buntis team respects the couples' rights to choose the family-planning intervention they prefer. Counseling is also provided.
Initiated by former Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit, the campaign hopes to enlighten couples on some of the most basic issues on procreation, parenthood, and sexual health. Priority areas are urban slums, barangays in cities and municipalities that are considered among the poorest in the country, indigenous peoples, and areas that have limited or little access to basic health services.
"Target exceeded"
The DOH reports that the program initially targeted 172,000 men and women and adolescents. They were given information on how to manage their fertility and access reproductive-health services.
So far, the DOH reports, the program has been able to touch base with 1,041,886 people. Of the provinces in Western Visayas, Negros Occidental had the most number of people reached at 416,000; followed by Iloilo with 345,000; and Antique with 116,000. As a result, there were some 32,000 new users of family-planning methods, in addition to 100,000 current users.
Aside from house-to-house campaigns, health workers visited schools and government offices, discussing the merits of fertility awareness and the government services that have long been in place but many did not know about.
Taboo, antilife
Ironically, a reproductive-health program frequently accused of submitting to the pressures of religious groups has now come up with a program that is also being the object of attacks from practically the same religious groups.
Catholic groups in certain areas are reported to go in full force, flashing banners that read "No to Ligtas Buntis, No to Contraception," as health workers give away brochures on family planning and maternal health.
In Jaro, Iloilo City, bishops and priests reportedly held a rally to denounce the program, saying it is antilife. They even hit the counseling aspect of the program, saying it invaded one's privacy because it tackled questions on sexuality.
In Cebu, reports said some health workers who participated in the campaign were barred from receiving communion. Some priests said it is a sign of their opposition to the campaign. There are also reports that some directors in regional hospitals refused to perform tubal ligation and vasectomy for religious reasons.
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