Maternal mortality in Laos still one of the highest in region
(KPL) Data showed that maternal mortality was still one of the highest in the region and so there was an urgent need for family planning.
This was clearly reflected in Laos, indicated by the fact that many of its women still faced the greatest challenge in the life of any woman, pregnancy and child birth.
This was said by Ms Mieko Yabuta, representative of UNFPA in Laos, at a forum on the occasion of the World Population Day, to an audience of distinguished guests, government officials, students and members of the public in ICTC, Vientiane, 23 July.
She also said that in this country, there was an imbalance of school enrollment between girls and boys, thereby giving solid proof that the achievement of gender equality was still a pipe dream.
To solve this and other problems, Ms Mieko stressed the importance of quality data collection in order to understand the present situation, to track progress towards achieving national goals, to plan interventions to save lives and to improve opportunities for the people.
Another key speaker in this forum, UN Resident Coordinator, Ms Sonam Yanchen Rana, said that as Laos would have a population of six million people in five years’ time, the government would need to have quality data from all kinds of surveys to plan for future generations.
This, she added, was more important than ever now as Laos was giving the final touches to its Seventh National Socio-economic Development Plan, working harder than ever to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015 and exiting from the Least Developed Country status by 2020.
A National University of Laos demographer, who spoke at this forum said that the fertility rate of Laos was at a high of 6.5 in 1985 but it moderated to 4.5 in 2000.
One could contrast the present fertility rate of Laos with that of Singapore’s low rate, 1.4, far below the replacement rate of 2.1 percent and statisticians said that if this puny city state’s rate persisted, the Singaporean people would become extinct and as dead as the dodo, albeit in about 150 years.
The demographer added that Laos had a working age population of 50 per cent and even with the reduced fertility rate, this percentage would increase, so that by 2050, it would hit the 60 per cent mark.
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