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A family planning program drives down abortion rate
Village Welcomes Small Families
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Photo: USAID/Jay Sorensen
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Physician Stela Loghin performs a health check up on a little boy in the village of Cumpana, Romania.
“I’m happy that our abortion rate has decreased,” said Cumpana Mayor Mariana Gaju.
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Physician Stela Loghin says Cumpana has changed dramatically — for the better. This village near the seaside metropolis of Constanta suffered during years of dictatorship, followed by a transition period in the 1990’s. During the dictatorship, family planning was illegal. During the transition, it was unheard of. Many women were having abortions and hundreds of children were being abandoned in maternity wards each year. The children were left to grow up in state-run institutions.
USAID began supporting family planning and reforming the child welfare system in the late 1990’s. Since then, thousands of family doctors, community nurses, and peer educators have been trained in maternal and child health care concepts like birth spacing and family planning. Now, three quarters of rural communities in Romania have a family doctor who is savvy about these things.
“I’m happy that our abortion rate has decreased,” said Cumpana Mayor Mariana Gaju. The nurses and doctors in her district have received training in birth spacing, peer education, and family planning. “We have lots of women who need this kind of information,” she added.
Since USAID’s projects reached Cumpana, the village has gained a community nurse and a social worker who address social service issues. Ionela Baisau, the community nurse who received training through a USAID funded project, says attitudes towards contraception have changed for the better. “At first women were skeptical, they were worried they would get fat or that it was not safe. Also, many women weren’t sure what I was talking about, because they were used to just having an abortion,” she said. “But now, people understand what I’m doing, and it makes me very happy when they come back to see me.”
Baisau offers family planning counseling, as well as social service help such as registering children for medical care. A male peer educator, trained by a USAID project, also works in Cumpana, mainly with men. “I tell them ‘If you want a child, you should have one. But if you don’t want one you should be able to choose not to have one, rather than have it and not be able to take care of it’,” said Benone Dobre, the peer educator.
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