Tuesday March 19th, 2024
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Egypt Pushes to Make All Forms of Contraceptives Free to Women

The government is looking into a programme that will provide all forms of contraception to women free of charge, among a number of other family planning initiatives.

Staff Writer

Egypt gets a new baby every 13.5 seconds. That’s like, what, five babies by the time you finish reading this article. In October 2020, our population hit 101 million people - and we had just gotten over our shock of hitting 100 million in February 2020, barely half a year before! With reports from around the world showing that you'll get as much as an 89% drop in unwanted pregnancies after normalising contraceptives, one thing is clear. Contraceptives WORK - as long as people are able to get them.


The government is looking into a programme that will provide all forms of contraception to women free of charge. If established, it'll make it easier for women to reliably schedule their lives, so that they’ll only need to worry about raising a family when they're ready for it.


Egyptian officials are currently developing plans to add family planning courses to the school curriculum and family planning clinics to every hospital in the country. There are also talks to create legislation such as harsher penalties for marrying underaged girls, a strict minimum age of marriage, and even mandatory family counselling sessions for couples who intend to marry.


It may sound like they're throwing a lot of darts at the wall, but consider this one fact: Egypt's annual population growth is equal to that of Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK... COMBINED. While few of these plans have been set in stone, it's clear how much importance is being placed on getting Egypt's explosive baby boom to slow down.