BSS, Dhaka :
State Minister for Health and Family Welfare Zahid Maleque on Wednesday said Bangladesh has made tremendous progress in the fields of population and reproductive health.
With a population of 161 million, Bangladesh has achieved the highest life expectancy rate after Sri Lanka and second lowest rate of fertility and lowest rate of mortality of under-five children in South Asia, he said.
The state minister said this while addressing a two-day 11th International Inter-Ministerial Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) that began in New Delhi on Wednesday.
In his speech, he highlighted Bangladesh’s experience in implementation of ICPD+20 and post MDGs, and informed the meeting of the government’s achievements in improving reproductive health, reducing woman and child mortality, lowering birth rate from about 7.0 children per woman in 1970 to 2.3 children presently.
He said Bangladesh has showed a credible basis for aspiring to be a middle income nation by 2021, as observed in the World Banks’ recent report.
Bangladesh has become one of the only six countries that are on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 on reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, he added.
The state minister further mentioned that Bangladesh is often named as a “Model of Economic Development”, which is also sometimes identified by others as the “Standard Bearer of South Asia”.
In this connection, he referred to a recent article of the Economist that says, “Bangladesh has become a model of what can be done”.
Delegates from 26 member countries of Partners in Population and Development (PPD), Inter-Governmental Organization Promoting South-South Cooperation, attended the meeting while a number of countries (Bangladesh, India, China, Zimbabwe, Mali, Uganda, Egypt) were represented by ministers, state ministers, vice ministers and secretaries.
The state minister chaired the Technical Session IV (Population and Health Policies: Opportunities for South-South Partnership and Investments for Demographic Dividend).
He also delivered his speech as a panelist at the Technical Session V (Two decades of South-South Cooperation on Reproductive Health, Population and Development.
