Family Planning

Family planning is the method of planning your family in terms of the desired number of children, and comfortably spacing your pregnancies. Family planning is achieved with the use of contraceptives. Traditional methods of contraception involve the withdrawal method, where the man ejaculates outside the woman’s vagina, and the calendar-based method, where intercourse is avoided during the fertile days of a menstrual cycle. However, there are more modern methods of contraception, which include:

• Oral contraceptive pills
• Implants containing progesterone hormone
• Injections of oestrogen and progesterone
• Intrauterine devices
• Male and female condoms
• Male and female sterilisation

Family planning has several benefits such as prevention of pregnancy-related health risks, sexually transmitted diseases (such as AIDS) and pregnancies in adolescents, slowing the growth of population and decreasing the rate of infant deaths.