IMA to conduct training courses in family planning

For the last six and a half decades, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has been actively engaged in Public Health issues, ranging from immunization, ORT, maternal and child health care, and has been cooperating with the Government of India in various National Health Programs. Recently, IMA organized a new and exciting program on India's most significantly health issue--family planning. The training is to be competency based and participatory, with the main emphasis on knowledge, attitude and skills required to provide comprehensive child spacing. IMA has developed this multilevel program to train personnel in all methods of family planning, like: participation in basic oral contraceptive training; supplementary training in other methods; clinical practice for providing information on how to select and manage non-clinical family planning services; simulated practice in IUCD; and clinical practice in IUCD training. Training can also be arranged for vasectomy practicum and minilaparotomy. The main purpose of the training program is to realize the Government's goal of 60% contraceptive prevalence usage by the year 2000. In India, less than 2% of the 132.5 million reproductives, couples use oral contraceptives, because of widespread misconceptions regarding the pill among the general populace and the medical community. This program has been designed to counter these misgivings and thus encourage the "use of modern family planning methods" to take on the menace of the population explosion.