Vientiane Capital, 22 September 2016 – The consensus workshop on Family Planning is opened by Dr Phouthone Meuangpak, Vice Minister of Health along with Ms Frederika Meijer, UNFPA Representative. The workshop is attended by Director/Deputy Director of Provincial Health Departments and key Mother and Child Health Staff from all 17 provinces, as well as staff from Ministry of Health, and development partners who support Family Planning programme.

In Lao PDR, overall 20 percent of women would like to delay or stop childbearing but are not using any method of contraception. Unmet need is high particularly among young women, women with no education and the poorest women. Adolescent birth rate (women aged 15-19)  in Laos is among the highest in the region, 94 in 1,000 girls ages 15 - 19 .

The Lao Government has doubled its efforts to improve women’s lives through Family Planing programme by committing to the global Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) movement early this year. FP2020 is a global partnership dedicated to improve voluntary access to family planning information, services and supplies for women and girls in low income countries. The commitment was led by Ministry of Health (MOH) and endorsed by Ministry of Planning and Investment and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 Family Planning is important for a woman’s ability to choose if and when to become pregnant and has a direct impact on her health and well-being. Family planning enables women who wish to limit the size of their families to do so. Evidence suggests that women who have more than four children are at increased risk of maternal mortality. Particularly young women need access to family planning information and services, since they are at increased risk of complications and death from early childbearing as well as unintended pregnancy.

In order to support government to track its progress in this area, experts from Avenir Health, under the Track20 project funded by Gates Foundation are in Laos this week. Track20 programme was created to support countries that made a commitment to Family Planning by helping them monitor the progress of their family planning program.

In this regard, MoH through Department of Hygiene and Health Promotion, with supports from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) conducted a Monitoring and Evaluation Training and Consensus Building Workshop from 19 – 22 September 2016.

The main objective is to build capacity of health staff at central level on monitoring progress of Family Planning Programme, and build consensus on 2016 FP data to feed into FP2020 core indicators to be reported in the annual report.

It is essential that health staff can monitor programe implementation and learn to use tools, understand family planning data, and know how to interpret results, tracking progress of FP programme, as well as utilize results to plan, reassess effectiveness to ensure moving toward FP2020 commitment target.

Frederika Meijer said: “Understanding and interpreting Family Planning data is key to design interventions that give access to quality Family Planning service. And in the end, this is what we want: that every pregnancy is wanted and safe.”

For more information please contact:

Dr Kopkeo Souphanthong, Deputy Director of Mother and Child Health Centre

Tel: 020 55700980

Ms Siriphone Sakulku, SRH Programme Coordinator

Tel: 020 22887631