Overview
The mission of UNFPA is to support countries in using population data for policies and programs to reduce poverty and ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV-AIDS and every girl or woman is treated with dignity and respect. This mission is a reflection of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and as such fully provides the basis to support the Government of the Philippines to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other internationally agreed goals. While progress has generally been good in most of the MDGs, the difficult challenge of making universal access to reproductive health a reality for all Filipino couples and individuals as well as reducing the unacceptable high maternal deaths in the country persist.
In 2008, an estimated 3.4 million Filipino women became pregnant, 54 per cent of them (around 1.9 million) are unintended - that is, they occur too soon, too close together or after a couple already has as many children as they want. Maternal and infant mortality are unacceptably high, especially among disadvantaged women. While an estimated 7.2 million Filipino women currently practice contraception, women still have an average of one more child that they want. With no contraceptive use, there would be 5.9 million pregnancies annually; 1.3 million more unplanned births; 0.9 million induced abortions and 3,500 more maternal deaths each year. Despite the health benefits of contraception, use is far below the apparent demand. Based on a national survey report on fertility preferences, 10.2 million women in the Philippines were at risk of unintended pregnancy in 2008. Women are considered to be at risk of unintended pregnancy if they are sexually active and able to become pregnant, but do not want to become pregnant within the next two years or at all.
The UNFPA will continue to provide assistance in family planning by working with mandated agencies in the country. The UNFPA CO will work in the areas of RH Commodity Security including making available free or subsidized commodities through LGUs; training of health service providers; dissemination of FP Clinical Practice Guidelines; assisting LGUs with logistics systems for contraceptives and formulating Contraceptive Self-Reliance (CSR) plans and policies. Finally, the UNFPA will also promote the expansion of FP providers through public-private partnerships.
The strategy of the UNFPA includes the strengthening of both the demand and supply side in obtaining and giving information and services on Family Planning respectively.
The demand side strategies for example will focus on debunking myths and misconceptions about modern contraceptives, effectiveness of various FP methods and improving counseling skills of frontline providers. This will be supplemented by distributing by appropriate literature and materials. In parallel to this, the supply side strategy will focus on improving contraceptive availability to ensure steady and uninterrupted access to family planning services and information. Selective provision of essential FP supplies and commodities to address the requirements of income poor LGUs will also be given top priority.
The Philippine Family Planning Program aims to empower men and women to live healthy, productive and fulfilling lives with the right to achieve their desired family size through quality and legally permissible FP methods. However, there is a gap between policy and actual practice.
Family planning was devolved to the local government units by the national government within the Contraceptive Self-Reliance Strategy (CSR) to respond to the anticipated shortfall of FP commodities brought about by the withdrawal of donated commodities in 2001. This resulted in halting the contraceptive distribution and logistics management information system by the Department of Health in 2006.
To counter this, the UNFPA aims to continue working with the local leagues to provide contraceptives for income poor LGUs as a stop-gap measure. Grants for RH Commodities of Php150 million were included in 2007 and Php 1.2 billion arrived in 2008 from the General Appropriations Act (GAA) to provide funding support to LGUs. However due to substantive delay in issuance of clear guidelines on how to access the grant, the utilization of these funding facilities remain low.
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