World Population Day 2017: BMC to Launch Family Planning Programme Antara on July 11

On World Population Day, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will launch a new family planning programme called Antara, on July 11.

Mumbai, July 10: On World Population Day on July 11, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will launch a new family planning programme called Antara. This programme will be launched in association with the Centre and the Maharashtra government. Antara, the new injectable contraceptive, is a part of Centre’s National Family Welfare Programme. A BMC press note said that the programme is aimed at bringing down the unmet need of contraception in the community, to increase the use of contraceptives and the couple protection rate.

This year, the theme of World Population Day is ‘Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations’. This theme aims at providing safe, voluntary family planning. The family programme Antara’s motive and the aim of UN for the World Population Day is similar, that is working to control the population and informing people about various contraceptives. (ALSO READ: World Population Day 2017 to be Observed on July 11 With The Theme Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations)

Under this National Welfare Programme, the government aims to bring down the maternal deaths, abortion-related maternal deaths, maternal morbidity and the neonatal morbidity and mortality. The BMC has taken measures to counsel couples who did not adopt any family planning method or use of contraceptives. Antara will help bring them under temporary and permanent methods. A senior health official of the BMC said that Antara is a long-term, reversible, highly effective temporary method of contraception, reports India today. He added, “It will be available as a additional temporary method of contraception along with other available methods of contraception”.