Pakistan has the highest fertility rate in the South Asian region, with 3.6 children per woman and an annual population growth rate of 2.4%. While Safe Delivery Safe Mother believes strongly that women must be able to choose the size of their families, we also know that women and their families are healthier when births are spaced. However, in some rural areas, such as Jalalpur Khaki, people believe that family planning prevents births altogether.
Training Accomplishments
To address high fertility and maternal death rates, Safe Delivery Safe Mother implemented a pilot project funded through The Pitch regional competition, a knowledge management innovation created by Knowledge SUCCESS and sponsored by USAID. The project trained over 160 government-deployed Skilled Birth Attendants (SBAs) in the Multan district, located in the Punjab province (the most populous in Pakistan, with a population of over 110 million). SBAs are often a community’s only source of skilled care, seeing women at a time in their lives when they are most focused on childbearing and health.