Family planning success – at a cost

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Marcia Graham, medical officer of health at the Westmoreland Public Health Services, believes that long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) is a key factor contributing to the parish’s low birth rate, echoing the national concern over Jamaica’s reported falling number of births.

Responding to a question from Councillor Michael Jackson of the Whitehouse Division during Thursday’s monthly meeting of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation, Graham confirmed that the declining birth rate in Westmoreland mirrored the national trend.

“The parish of Westmoreland is not different from the rest of the national situation. We have seen people opting to defer from having a family,” said Graham, referencing the national decline in childbirth at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital (VJH), which has dropped from an average of 500 per month last year to under 300 monthly this year.

Graham framed the reduced birth rate as an indirect success of Jamaica’s past family-planning efforts, including campaigns such as ‘Two is Better Than Too Many’.

“In our parish, we would have equipped nine of our medical officers at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital last year, where they were certified and have started another method of family planning known as LARC,” said Graham.

LARC refers to highly effective, long-lasting birth-control methods that require no daily action and are easily reversible. These methods include intrauterine devices and contraceptive implants, and they boast a failure rate of less than one per cent, making them among the most reliable forms of reversible contraception.

“So we have an implant, and once you put in that, for three years, it will protect you against pregnancy, and we have been having a good uptake, so that is also helping to decrease our birth rate,” said Graham.

She further noted that while she did not have the specific figures at the meeting, she would seek to obtain them from hospital records over the coming weeks.

In Thursday’s lead story in The Gleaner, Sister Dawn Williams Gordon, the ward manager of labour and delivery at the Kingston-based VJH, confirming the notable decline, described the current trend as “unprecedented”.

Using hospital statistics to bolster her claim for the situation this year in comparison to last, Williams Gordon said the hospital recorded 459 births in January, 364 in February, 362 in March, and 342 in April, which contrasted sharply with last year, where the corresponding months all had over 500 births.

In December 2023, Jamaica, with a population of about three million people, recorded a fertility rate of 1.9 for the first time, falling below the internationally recognised replacement level of 2.1.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com