Brief #2: Family Planning
Family planning methods — enabling women to avoid unwanted pregnancies, achieve better health
and greater autonomy — are particularly essential in India, where the under-25 population experiences
continuous, rapid growth. As the second most populous nation in the world, India was the first to launch
a family planning program in 1952. Over the first 27 years, this program shifted the focus of family
planning from traditional “rhythm” methods to sterilisation and intra-uterine devices. Since then, total
fertility rate has seen a steady decrease, while access to contraceptive methods has improved
gradually.
In 2017, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare introduced Mission Family Vikas, aimed at increasing
access to high-quality contraceptive methods, such as by freely providing two contraceptive drugs
(MPA and Chaya) to government hospitals. Family Vikas’ goal is to stabilise the overall fertility rate at
2.1 by 2025. Additionally, India has signed the Family Planning 2020 agreement (FP2020), under which
it commits to providing access to contraceptives to 48 million more women by 2020. Data from the
National Family Health Survey presents useful tools to monitor and evaluate the progress of family
planning accessibility schemes in India, on a national, state, and district level.
Quick Facts from NFHS-4 (2015-16): Contraceptive prevalence rate by state
1. 17.7% of contraceptive non-users Manipur 24
reported that a health worker had
Bihar 24
spoken to them about family
planning, a significant increase from Goa 26
10.1% as per NFHS-3 (2005-06). Jharkhand 40
2. According to NFHS-4, eight per Gujarat 47
cent women between 15 and 19
Tamil Nadu 53
years of age were either already
mothers or pregnant. Delhi 55
3. The contraceptive prevalence rate Rajasthan 60
among currently married women
Haryana 64
age 15-49 decreased slightly, from
Maharashtra 65
56% in 2005-06 to 54% in 2015-16.
4. Knowledge of contraceptive Andhra Pradesh 70
methods is almost universal in India, West Bengal 71
with 99 percent of currently married
Chhattisgarh 74
women and men age 15-49
Punjab 76
knowing at least one method of
contraception. 0 20 40 60 80
Female sterilization is the most commonly used contraceptive (36% prevalence rate), followed only at
5.6% by condom. Male sterilization is the least common, at 0.3%.
The use of modern methods is 51.3% -- however, this is significantly skewed due to the widespread use
of female sterilization and does not reflect high prevalence of reversible methods such as condoms.
76% of men are exposed to family planning information, while 72% of women are exposed to the same.
About 60% of men aged 15-49 have seen or heard a message regarding family planning in the last few
months; 59% saw such messages on hoardings while 61% were exposed to these via television.
% of women age 15-49 using methods of
contraception
60
53.5
50 47.8
40 36
30
20
10 5.6
4.1
0.3 1.5
0
Any method Any modern Female Male IUD/PPIUD Pill Condom
method sterilization sterilization
How can this inform your work? Reference:
These figures suggest that while progress has International Institute for Population
been made in spreading awareness about, and Sciences (IIPS) and ICF. 2017. National
increasing the prevalence of, contraceptive Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), 2015-16:
methods, these interventions are still skewed India. Mumbai: IIPS.
towards permanent methods, particularly
female sterilization. As journalists, you can shed Project SANCHAR is aimed at building capacity and
facilitating the adoption of practices to use or draw on
light on the state of knowledge programs in the
evidence in public health communication and
field of family planning, as well as provide a practice. To facilitate this, SANCHAR collates and
sound, data-driven analysis or evaluation of provides data from scientifically validated sources,
current family planning schemes in India under from national datasets in easily interpretable formats,
FP2020. Your work may also help increase and accessible visuals that can be downloaded easily.
access to information about family planning,
including modern reversible methods such as
condoms.
