Standard Days Method - A new form of family planning
Standard Days Method as a new family planning norm found full support when the Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Shri P.K. Hota, endorsed the method while addressing the National-level Stakeholders’ Meeting on the Standard Days Method - From Research to Practice, here today. He said that it was a new method which could well be tried and a campaign launched throughout the country to create mass awareness. Shri Hota said the services of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) who are engaged at the ground level under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) could be utilized to popularize and explain about the new family planning norm. He said that besides being new, it was totally inexpensive and an easy to use natural family planning method.
The one-day meeting was organized by the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) and the Institute of Reproductive Health in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
The Standard Days Method identifies a fixed fertile window in the menstrual cycle and helps users to be aware of the days pregnancy can occur. Users of this natural method can rely on CycleBeads, a color-coded set of beads, to help identify fertile (Days 8 through 19) and non-fertile days and monitor cycle length.
This was a press release issued by the PIB yesterday. The Health Secretary says this system is
1. new
2. inexpensive and
3. easy to use natural family planning method.
The Secretary doesn’t seem to be very well informed. Let us consider the above points.
New.
More than a decade ago addressing a meeting, Khushwant Singh asked a question, “Why did family planning fail in India?” And he proceeded to answer that question. “The first Union Health Minister was Rajkumari Amrit Kaur who was a spinster. She believed that aggressive birth control measures will not work in India. So she started distributing necklaces with different colour beads to the women. They were supposed to wear black beads during the safe periods and red beads during the unsafe periods; so that the husband will know during which period it is safe to have sex without the danger of children. But these things are normally done during the nights when the colour of the beads simply does not matter”
So Mr. Secretary, this is nothing new; this was tried and declared a failure in the 50s.
Inexpensive:
This product is marketed by an organisation called Cycle Technologies. We went to their website http://www.cyclebeads.com to find out about how inexpensive the product is. This product is available for only USD 12.95 – that works out to about Rs. 600/- and that is inexpensive for our Health Secretary. Does he get paid in Dollars? And how many Indian women can afford to buy this inexpensive thing at Rs.600/-.? The whole thing looks like some foreign company is trying to take us for a ride. Somebody is trying to sell us stupid beads for Crores of rupees and the Government departments will give reports that because of the beads, growth of birth rate has come down drastically and if we buy a few hundred Crores of these beads, we can achieve zero growth.
Easy to use natural family planning method
Let us see the simple procedure of using these beads. The website describes it in simple detail.
• CycleBeads are a color-coded string of beads that represent a woman's menstrual cycle.
• Each bead represents a day of the cycle and the color helps a woman to determine if she is likely to be fertile that day.
• The day a woman starts her period she puts the rubber ring on the red bead.
• Each day she moves the ring one bead, always in the direction of the arrow.
• When the ring is on the red bead or a dark bead, there is very low likelihood of pregnancy, so she can have intercourse on these days without getting pregnant.
• When the ring is on a white bead - Days 8 through 19 - there is a high likelihood of getting pregnant if a woman has unprotected intercourse.
• Please note, the Standard Days Method, on which CycleBeads are based, works best for women with regular menstrual cycles that are between 26 and 32 days long. Women with cycles outside this range should use a different method of family planning.
Well, this is the easy to use method. Most highly educated women are sure to get confused with this and in any case the beads don’t ensure regular menstrual cycle. What is going to happen if these beads are distributed among the rural poor illiterate women?
When there are many safe inexpensive birth control methods available in the country, why should we go for these fancy products which by Indian standards cost a fortune? And which is nothing new as propagated. Incidentally these CycleBeads are patented and any one duplicating them will face prosecution.
The best method of family planning is not these beads, not those condoms but simple plain education. You provide education to the women; they will find their own methods for birth control. And the second step is poverty alleviation. Women with large number of children are invariably poor and illiterate – in any community or religion.
We should spend a little more money on education and economic uplift instead of falling for these foreign beads, which are not new, which is very complicated and which is quite expensive.