Answer:

According to WHO, reproductive health implies that “people are able to have a responsible, satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so”. Implicit in this are the right of men and women to be informed of and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of fertility regulation of their choice, and the right of access to appropriate health care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant.

Reproductive health interventions are most likely to include attention to the issues of family planning, STD prevention and management and prevention of maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity. Reproductive health can also address issues such as harmful practices, unwanted pregnancy, unsafe abortion, reproductive tract infections including sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, infertility, malnutrition and anemia, and reproductive tract cancers.

In India, the Reproductive and Child Health Programme, was launched in 1997.Its aim was to integrate services for the prevention and management of unwanted pregnancy, the promotion of safe motherhood and child survival, and the prevention and management of reproductive tract infections and sexually transmitted infections. The programme aimed at expanding services to meet the needs of hitherto under-served and neglected population groups, including adolescents, and economically and socially disadvantaged groups, such as urban slum and tribal populations.

How this concept is different from existing family planning and maternal and child health programmes:

♤ The objectives, design and evaluation of family planning programmes were largely driven by a demographic imperative, without due consideration to related health issues such as maternal health or STD prevention and management.

♤ In general, such programmes exclusively targeted women, taking little account of the social, cultural and intimate realities of their reproductive lives and decision- making powers.

♤ They tended to serve only married people, excluding, in particular, young people.

♤ Services were rarely designed to serve men even though they have reproductive health concerns of their own, particularly with regard to sexually transmitted diseases.

Hence, a reproductive health approach would differ from a narrow family planning approach in several ways. It would aim to build upon what exists and at the same time to modify current narrow, vertical programmes to ones in which every opportunity is taken to offer women and men a full range of reproductive health services in a linked way.