Speech by Dr Bardan Jung Rana, WHO Representative to Bangladesh
Good afternoon and greetings to all!
It is an honor and privilege to be here for the closing ceremony of Bangladesh 5th National Youth Conference on Family Planning 2020 organized by SERAC-Bangladesh.
Adolescence and youth is the period when an individual has to deal with significant physical, mental, and emotional changes as they begin to transit from childhood to adulthood. Given the vulnerability of this life stage, it is important to ensure that adolescents and youths are given the necessary services, information, skills, and opportunities to develop their full potential to become productive and remain in good health.
One-fifth of Bangladesh's total population consists of adolescents. The proportion of adolescents in the population is expected to grow in the coming years, making it imperative for us to invest in their overall health and wellbeing. And the need for investment in their health is not only because of the sheer size of this young population group but also due to public health, economic, and human rights factors. Investing in adolescent health will bring the triple dividend: benefit adolescents now, benefit them in the future and benefit the next generation.
Furthermore, while investing in health, we must also pay special attention to sexual and reproductive health, ensuring both information and access to services.
While the SDGs call for universal access to family planning by 2030, today over 200 million women around the world still do not have access to contraceptive methods and 25 million unsafe abortions take place every year. Despite a target to reach 120 million more women and girls in the world’s 69 poorest countries with modern contraceptives by 2020, there have been only 46 million new users only, and therefore further commitments are requested.
However, the sexual and reproductive health of youths in Bangladesh is a matter of great concern. On one hand, we have limited access to information and services on sexual and reproductive health, including contraceptive methods, and on the other hand, we have a high prevalence of child marriage.
For Bangladesh, these two issues translate to the highest adolescent fertility rate in South Asia where 1 girl in 10 has a child before the age of 15 and 1 in 3 adolescents becomes mother or pregnant by the age of 19.
To address these issues, WHO worked with the Government and other partners to develop The National Adolescent Health Strategy 2017-2030, which has the Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health as the first strategic direction. This is a strong statement by the Government of Bangladesh on the importance it attaches to meeting the health needs of this very important population group.
And an essential part of the strategy is the sexual education that needs to start in an age-appropriate manner from early adolescent ages and to continue in all academic and training institutions until people become adults.
However, complementary to the strategy and to Government's action, I believe it is extremely important that Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights become more and more a generation demand.
I, therefore, congratulate once again the organizers of this event for putting in the spotlight these crucial topics of family planning, sexual health, sexual rights. These must not be taboo subjects. They are an essential part of everyone’s life and they should be thoroughly discussed at macro and micro levels of society.
I would like to reassure you of WHO’s commitment to continuing the work with the Government of Bangladesh to improve awareness and access of adolescents and youths to Sexual and Reproductive Health services.
Together, we can make significant steps for reaching the Sustainable Development Goals related to improving adolescent and youth health, a great step ahead for the country and its future.