A US-based report reveals that with the growing population worldwide, access to reproductive health services is going to become more difficult, especially in developing countries.

One of the Millennium Development Goals is to reduce poverty, but with the current population trends, the rural woman is likely to be even more marginalised as far as reproductive health facilities are concerned.

Governments need to ransack through their policies and write and rewrite them if we are to achieve any level of equality between the urban and rural woman. The latter, because of traditional beliefs and myths already avoid certain family planning methods which are already scarce in the rural areas.

That these services could become even more scarce due to population growth, points to the fact that the women may altogether abandon family planning, give birth to more children whom they may not be able to take care of, worsening the overall problem of poverty.

There is an urgent need for all stakeholders to come together and formulate a strategy which will embrace all classes of women. Health facilities in rural areas need to be improved, and reproductive health services made more accessible.

There is also need for a serious campaign on the advantages of small, manageable families, which seems the best way to curb the rate of population growth, the cause for the projected scarcity of reproductive health services.

Yes, Uganda has good, policies on reproductive health. What we need now is for them to stop being on paper and be implemented with immediate effect.