Thursday January 10, 2008

Focus on parenting and reproductive health

By DEBBIE CHAN

THE National Population and Family Development Board Malaysia (LPPKN) has been working quietly in the background for the past few decades and slowly shaping family units in terms of better parenting and heightened awareness on reproductive health.

But getting down to family planning is no easy task as the issues involved are of a much bigger scale and which require a change of strategy by the organisation to include family and parenting matters.

For the young: Kafe@Teen has space and facilities to cater to youngsters and also learn more about reproductive health.

“We began addressing family needs and family planning and all these were related to psychosocial factors and our objective was to improve the quality of the population,” said director general of the board Aminah Abdul Rahman.

Readjusting the objective, the body began work on population issues, reproductive health as well as family issues and highlighted how these matters concerned not only married adults but also adolescents.

Their comprehensive coverage has been recognised by the United Na-tions and Malaysia was awarded for its total coverage of the family unit.

Aminah: ‘Through our data collection, we pinpointed that one of the major concerns of local women is breast cancer’

“We were recognised because al-though Malaysia is a Muslim-majority country, we still managed to address issues which included the support of the older generation and men. It took constant discussions with religious scholars and in the 1980s, a fatwa was finally issued by the local religious department to say that family planning is permissible if it is to safeguard the mother and child’s health. It must be voluntary and the family must be allowed to decide how many children they want to have,” she explained.

The award has put Malaysia in the international eye as a model to the world and authorities from Yemen and Abu Dhabi have requested that LPPKN share their success stories in the respective communities.

Among some of the effective programmes that LPPKN has implemented include Parenting@Work, mammogram subsidy, and the Kafe@Teen outlets.

“Through our data collection, we pinpointed that one of the major concerns of local women is breast cancer. A lot of women are only getting treatment at late stages. The mammogram subsidy programme is implemented at private mammogram centres to make early detection more accessible. Mammogram is free at public hospitals but we understand that a lot of women prefer private centres for convenience and accessibility,” Aminah explained.

This year, LPPKN is implementing the e-mammogram system to allow women to pre-register online and to choose the centres that they want to go to. This is especially targeted at women above 40 and a RM50 subsidy is allowed at any of the 53 clinics endorsed by the body.

“To further promote the effectiveness of this programme, we will be organising big scale road shows to reach marginalised groups in rural areas,” she added.

Personal attention: A participant being briefed on the RM50 subsidy for a mammogram at any of the 53 centres recognised by LPPKN.

Kafe@Teens is a platform for the body to reach out to neglected youngsters and help them be more aware of reproductive health.

“Our approach is by attracting them through general teenage interests like music and the Internet which we provide at the café. Through these mediums, we then delve into the topic of reproductive health.”

Parenting@Work is a programme that guides participants on how to avoid marital conflict and to equip parents with the knowledge of the balancing of time and responsibility towards family and career.

Health check: A nurse checking a participant's blood pressure during the programme.

The programme has been implemented among those in the public sector and the module includes role-play that utilises psychological instruments.

“We guide parents on how to balance time, manage stress and also give them a basic know-how on the fundamental human characteristics,” she said.

After a successful year in 2007, the body is now taking the programme to the private sector and also planning to introduce specific modules on parenting young children and adoles-cents.

“We realise that parenting these two different age groups require different skills and we want to help. But the general plan for 2008 is to expand all our programmes to include the target groups. We want to reach out to the segments of society which have been left out by other organisations.”

LPPKN’s strategy for 2008 is to reach the young, the marginalised, NGO’s as well as the private sector.

“Not only are we focused on what we do but we also want to channel information we have to other agencies so that we can work together to help the community,” said Aminah.

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