DHAKA: The government has to enforce the existing law in eliminating child marriage apart from ensuring contraceptive security through universal access to reproductive health if to achieve the UN-designated millennium development goals (MDGs), says a research report.

In the report the researchers also recommended flow of information on reproductive health and the strengthening of the existing health policy through participation of youths.

The Family Planning Association of Bangladesh (FPAB) carried out the two-month-long research in the universal access to reproductive health (5B), one of the universally declared development goals to be achieved within certain timelines.

FPAB formally disseminated the ‘shadow report’ Friday at Shaheed Mayezuddin Auditorium in the city ahead of the UN General Assembly, where world leaders, including Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, would discuss the progress on the universal development paradigm set in the form of MDGs.

Regarding the Bangladesh Demographic Health Service-2007 report, the FPAB report said the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) reached 60 percent in 2008, up by 20 percent, in the past eighteen years. The rate was 40 in 1991.

The country may score up to 69 percent by 2015, but that is not sufficient to attain replacement-level fertility as indicated in the MDGs, it added.

But the unmet need increased to 17 percent in 2007 for a lack of supply of contraceptive commodities, the report revealed.

The study says though there is the law to prevent child marriage, but the practice of child marriage is still widely prevalent—one of the major barriers to achieving the MDG in this field.

“Still two-thirds female adolescents got married before 21 and one-third of them started childbearing before 20.”

Addressing the seminar as the chief guest, Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni said the government is working to ensure access to information on reproductive health and sufficient supply of contraceptive commodities in achieving millennium development goals as well as the Vision 2021.

Deputy Representative of UNFPA Bangladesh Yuki Suehiro and Acting Director-General of FPAB KM Tareque, among others, spoke at the seminar with FPAB President Meher Afroze Chumki MP in the chair.

BDST: 1730 HRS, SEPT 17, 2010