In 2013, Myanmar committed to Family Planning 2020 (FP2020), a global partnership that supports the rights of women and girls to decide freely, and for themselves, whether, when, and how many children they want to have. The aim at the global level is that by 2020, 120 million more women and girls will be using contraceptives, thereby halving unmet need for family planning. Myanmar’s ambition is to increase the contraceptive prevalence rate to over 60 percent, to reduce unmet needs of family planning from 19 to less than 10 percent and to increase demand satisfaction from 60 percent to over 80 percent.
A Myanmar consensus building workshop for FP 2020 was conducted in Nay Pyi Taw on May 19th to see what steps Myanmar is taking to meet its commitments and more specifically how it will be reporting on these globally. Progress on the achievements of FP2020 is measured by 15 FP2020 core indicators. To ascertain if these are being achieved, a family planning estimation tool was developed by the Track 20 project of Avenir Health organization. Dr. Thein Thein Htay, the Deputy Minister of Health, opened the event and stated that the government increased health expenditure for the purchase of contraceptives from 1.29 million USD in 2013-2013 to 3.2 million USD in 2012-2013. Ms. Janet E. Jackson, Country Representative of UNFPA, commended the increased investment and encouraged skills and competencies development to fulfill the need to deliver services that fit the needs of clients.
During the workshop, the national monitoring system for quality of data was discussed. Dr. Aung Thu Tun, participating on behalf of UNFPA, shared that at the global level discussions are taking place to determine whether indicators on stock outs and rights and empowerment should be added as core indicators. He said that: "Taking on Track20 is another step towards national and global accountability. It will provide a clear marker for the country’s progress against commitments and the investments made in the support of strengthening sexual reproductive health systems and services provision. Track20 also enables Myanmar to align itself with other countries that are part of FP2020".
An important aim of the FP2020 initiative is to provide a method mix so that women can choose a method of their choice, convenience or other personal preference. In the workshop, challenges to ensure that women have access to a full range of contraceptive options were discussed. Participants exchanged experiences from the field in providing a method mix. The use of hormonal contraceptive injection is high in Myanmar and is the preferred method in both urban and rural settings.
It was agreed that public-private partnerships should be strengthened so that data from the private healthcare sector can be captured in monitoring efforts to track progress on the FP2020 indicators. The Maternal and Reproductive Health Unit of the Department of Public Health, with the support of UNFPA, will lead coordination of the public, NGO and private health sectors and share information so that Myanmar can stay on track to achieve its commitments by 2020.
