Health Minister Dr. Herbert Eldemire has warned that Jamaica’s soaring birth rate of 39.9 per 1,000 people – placed immense pressure on the Government to provide adequate education, health care, and social services. Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Standing Advisory Committee on Family Planning, Dr. Eldemire noted that those least able to afford it often have the largest families, deepening poverty and stretching national resources. 

Published November 10, 1966

Eldemire’s Challenge to Family Planners

Lower Jamaica’s Birth Rate to 25 per 1,000 by 1976

The Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Herbert Eldemire, has challenged the agencies operating the National Family Planning Programme to reduce the country’s birth rate from the current 39.9 per 1,000 to 25 per 1,000 within 10 years.

The aims and objectives of the programme, the minister said yesterday, are “in general terms to ensure that the people of Jamaica will be able to bring up their families so that their own and their children’s future will not be blighted because of the impossibility of finding the money to provide food and to take care of their health, educational and social needs.”

Dr. Eldemire was addressing the inaugural meeting of the Standing Advisory Committee on Family Planning, held at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital yesterday morning.

Thanking members for accepting his invitation to participate, he cited comparative birth-rate figures to illustrate “the magnitude of the task facing us.” The United Kingdom, he said, had a birth rate of 18.7 per 1,000; the United States, 21.2; Sweden, 16; and Jamaica, 39.9—a figure which meant that each year 69,678 children were born in this country. Coupled with a low death rate of 7.4 per 1,000, the implications were serious, the minister said.

In 1900, Jamaica’s population was 790,900. By 1950, it had grown to 1,429,000; and by 1965, to 1,810,000. If the current trend continued, the figure would reach 2,625,000 by 1975, Dr. Eldemire projected.

He lamented that, for the most part, those least able to afford it had the largest number of children, placing considerable strain on the Government and society to provide adequate education and health services. Moreover, the health of mothers who had many children was often adversely affected. Therefore, Dr. Eldemire said, family planning was essential to both personal well-being and national development.
As for the role of the committee, the minister told members:
“While it is accepted that you will have your work cut out for you in organizing clients and providing all medically safe methods of contraception, you will probably find that the greatest challenge will be in educating the population towards a desire to participate. This is not an easy task. It is not simply a matter of publicity campaigns, and this will become more evident when you have had the opportunity to study the report on the proposed health education programme prepared in collaboration with the U.S. AID consultant.”
He continued:

“The programme will require the involvement of the population at large and is a challenging organizational task, not only for this unit but for many other governmental and voluntary organizations throughout the island. Having embarked on such a programme, it is just as difficult to sustain interest, and that is why I stress that there is no shortcut to establishing a family planning programme that will achieve our stated aims and objectives.”
Presiding at yesterday’s meeting was Dr. Leslie Williams, Director of the Family Planning Unit. He said the committee would advise the minister on the national family planning programme, and that it was fitting that it be inaugurated at the hospital “which has seen so many of the hardships and suffering caused by excessive childbearing.”

Dr. Williams noted that Dr. Eldemire had secured a lasting place in Jamaica’s history—not as the first minister to recognize the population problem, but as the first to announce that the Government intended to tackle it actively and extensively.

Other members attending the meeting included Dr. Gordon Ewas, Dr. Y. Stockhausen, Mr. Marcel Knight (Central Planning Unit), Mr. Hartley Neita, Mr. Conroy Allison, Mr. Morris Cargill, Dr. Donald Walter, and Miss Thelma Thomas, secretary.

Absent due to illness were Mr. John Pringle and Mr. Stanley Motta.

For feedback: contact the Editorial Department at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com.