They met from about eleven African countries in a seminar in Douala.

Experts in health domains from some eleven African countries are participating in a workshop on family planning taking place at Bano palace in Douala. The experts are from Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Congo, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar, Central Africa Republic, Burundi, Angola and Sao Tome and Principe.

Speaking during the opening ceremony, the representative of the Minister of Public Health, Robinson E. Mbu, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Director of Family Health in Cameroon said contraceptives depicts all the processes and procedures that are employed to space out deliveries, adding that it does not mean reduction of family size. He said family planning has been neglected and so there is a need to awaken it in Africa especially the juxta-equatorial Africa where there is the lowest contraceptive prevalence in Africa.

Repositioning family planning is a big phrase plagued with misunderstanding, a phrase which even the “academic pundit is in equipoise”, said Mbu

He outlines various birth control methods such as condoms, both male and female, pills ,injectables, coils put in the woman’s hand or womb, her tubes tired the ultra uterine device, natural method which is abstinence or the billing method, among others. All these are used in Cameroon but often neglected.Mbu added that thanks to WHO , family planning will remain an indelible norm and objective in the sectoral approach.

The professor said contraceptives have been proven unquestionably that maternal mortality cum morbidity is inversely proportional to short birth intervals. Mbu said the term repositioning smacks of the rebirth of neglected activity. “If our maternal deaths have to be skewed towards negative gradient, we sincerely need this rebirth. We sincerely have to put family planning where it belongs”. The seminar which started on September 27 will end on the 1st October.