The infant mortality rate in Diyala Province reaches 20 percent, for many reasons, partly due to lack of family planning, including maintaining childbirth spacing.
The Iraqi Federal Government has a national strategy for family planning and childbirth spacing for 2020-2025 and is currently in the final stages of implementation to increase the childbearing interval to at least two to three years by providing health services and contraceptives.
The project is a roadmap to improve maternal and child health, reduce mortality and fight poverty.
"Women in rural areas are giving birth more and more and do not follow the strategy to organize families and decide on the number of children, yet women in urban areas have benefited more," Ziab Muhib, head of the legal department of Baquba Health Office, told KirkukNow.
According to health statistics from Baquba, center of Diyala province, the rate of live births is 80 percent and the rate of deaths is 20 percent.
Diyala has a population of more than 1.8 million, more than half of whom are rural. There are about 60 health centers and family planning services in the province.
Hozan Shahab, 33, a teacher in Baquba, visits the hospital regularly because of her pregnancy, but has never been familiar with family planning services.
She is dissatisfied with the treatment of pregnant women by health workers and nurses, not on the family, not even on the conditions during pregnancy and women's health in general.
Awareness campaigns are not only for women, but also for men
"We plan to have three to four children, but at least two years between them. We have a good economy. I ask women not to have too many children because the family economy and Iraq is not good,” Shahab said.
She says that have heard from friends, relatives and neighbors that if she gives birth to many children every year, she will have health problems.
If the interval between childbirths were increased to just two years, the mortality rate of children aged one to four would be reduced by 21 percent and infant mortality by 10 percent, according to the strategy.
The Baquba health official said the family planning strategy has been implemented in hospitals and health centers for five years, especially in maternity and children's hospitals.
According to Muhib, health workers often gather women outside health centers for awareness seminars.
In 2023, more than 44,000 children were born in Diyala and the maternal mortality rate was 45.6 per 100,000 cases.
"The awareness campaigns are not only for women, but also for men to have a three-year interval between childbirth with their spouses, which is not forbidden according to Sharia and so that parents can provide for their children," Muhib added.
According to Muhib, although family planning is being implemented in hospitals and health centers, but people still have to comply with it and benefit from it.
As emphasized more than once throughout the five-year strategy; Among the main objectives of family planning and maintaining the interval between childbirth, two or three years, is to fight poverty, protect the lives of mothers and babies, provide more appropriate health services and better education for children.
