By Andrew Phiri

Thyolo, August 19, Mana: Thyolo District Health Office says the district is registering high birth rate, a development which is exerting more pressure on health related resources.

Harry Milala, a statistician from the department of Health Management Information System at the hospital told Malawi News Agency on Friday that the Crude Birth Rate (CBR) in the district has heavily increased from the year 2020 to 2022.

CBR is the annual number of live births per 1,000 populations.

Milala said the CBR in Thyolo has increased from 17,477 to 21,813 live births representing 28 and 33 percent respectively.

He attributed low uptake of family planning services by people in the district as a major factor that has contributed to such trend.

“We should expect more births in the next five years here in Thyolo because limited people of child bearing age are accessing family planning services.

“We are asking government to intervene on the matter by increasing the numbers of health centres and health workers so that the growing population in the district should match health services provision,” he said.

Commenting on the matter, Thyolo District Family Planning Coordinator, Regina Mponya said youths particularly in the child bearing age group of 20 to 24 are contributing to high birth rate.

She said youths in the district think that contraceptives are for married people only and this result into early unplanned pregnancies.

“We have a big problem in motivating these young ones to adopt family planning services because they have myths and misconceptions that when they start accessing contraceptives before getting married, they will not have children in future,” she said.

Mana/ap/tv/scm