Govt to promote sterilization in family planning

Govt to promote sterilization in family planning

JAKARTA (JP): The government plans to embark on a campaign to
promote sterilization as an effective and safe method of
preventing unwanted pregnancy, a senior official of the National
Family Planning Board said on Saturday.

The board is currently working on preparing the campaign in
cooperation with the Indonesian Medical Association, the board's
deputy chairman Pieter H. Sumbung said.

Despite its advantages over most other forms of contraception,
sterilization -- in the form of vasectomies for husbands and
tubectomies for wives -- has not yet gained the popularity which
it is capable of gaining in Indonesia, chiefly because the
government has not promoted it hard enough, Sumbung said during a
seminar on sterilization as an effective family planning method.

The one-day seminar was organized by the medical association.

"Compared with other family planning methods, sterilization is
more effective, safer and cheaper," Sumbung said.

The promotion of sterilization will be chiefly handled by
doctors, hospitals and clinics, who will provide information as
well as sterilization facilities, he added.

Sumbung, who is also chairman of the Association of the
Indonesian Christian Intelligentsia, said sterilization, allowing
couples to avoid pregnancy without affecting their sexual
activities, has not been widely promoted by the government
because of some opposition from the Catholic and Moslem
communities in the country.

"If sterilization can be accepted by all religious groups, it
will not be difficult to launch the national campaign," he said.

Medical association chairman Azrul Azwar told the seminar,
which was attended by about 100 doctors and paramedics, that many
couples still associate sterilization with impotence and
infertility.

"This is where medical and health officers come in; namely, to
provide true and accurate information about vasectomy and
tubectomy," he said.

Modern medical technology has been able to help sterilized
couples have children if they wanted to, he added. Many couples
in Indonesia successfully conceived children again after being
sterilized for years, he said.

In the few cases in which women could not conceive, that had
been largely due to their being too old and had nothing to do
with sterilization, he added.

"Sterilization is just a surgical procedure to prevent a
female from becoming pregnant or a male from fathering a child,"
he said, adding that sterilization could be reversed using modern
medical technology.

Azrul said sterilization is more effective than the other
family planning methods, such as the pill, injections and intra-
uterine devices (IUDs), in preventing pregnancies because almost
100 percent of surgical procedures for vasectomy and tubectomy
were successful.

"Besides having no side-effects, like those posed by drug
pills and injections, sterilization does not affect couples'
sexual intimacy," he said.

According to a Family Planning Board survey conducted in March
1995, 1.33 million couples, or 5.8 percent of the 22.83 million
couples who practice family planning in Indonesia, have opted for
sterilization.

The study showed that the pill is still the most popular
contraceptive, with 31.4 percent of the total, followed by
injections (31 percent), IUDs (22.2 percent) and implants (eight
percent). (rms)