Don’t give birth to more than 3 babies - Population Council warns

The National Population Council (NPC) has said that it will push for the government to enforce a policy that will compel couples to give birth to a maximum of three babies.

This will be a mean of controlling the country’s population growth.

“The taxpayer must not be made to bear the cost of additional children by families who exceed the three children. No, it should not be a burden on the state and so we must review our social intervention programmes to reflect this policy.”

Dr Appiah explained that they are calling for this measures to be put in place so that the total fertility rate (that is, the number of children a woman is likely to have during her reproductive years) will be reduced from 5.5 to 5.0 by 2000; 4.0 by 2010 and 3.0 by 2020.

Dr Appiah said that the current annual growth rate of 2.5 percent posed a threat to national development.

However, she said that before the government makes such a law it must ensure that its family planning service was easily made available, accessible and affordable.

“We need to balance between reproduction and production because some of our policies are at variance with the population policy,” she said.

In Ghana currently, some people have more than 10 children. Dr Appiah expressed fears that Ghana’s population would double 28 years from now at the current annual growth rate of 2.5 percent.

Ghana’s population is estimated at 29.6 million. This means more than 23 million people have been born since the country attained independence in 1957 when its population was about 6 million.