Sterilisation Urged To Cut Egypt’s Birth-rate

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32114, 9 October 1969, Page 14

Sterilisation Urged To Cut Egypt’s Birth-rate

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) CAIRO. Egypt may resort to mass sterilisation in an attempt to curb its population explosion. The Health Minister (Dr Abdu Sallam), faced with a massive birth-rate which will more than double Egypt’s population by the year 2000, has declared that men must play their part in keeping the rate down. Advocating a method of temporary sterilisation, the Minister assured the male population that it was a simple operation which would not affect virility. Dr Sallam has just returned from a tour of India and Pakistan, where nine million men have voluntarily undergone sterilisation.

India’s Minister of Health (Mr K. K. Shah) visited Egypt recently and suggested that temporary sterilisation may also be Egypt’s answer to its heavy birth-rate.

Mr Shah assured Egyptians that, with a second very simple surgical operation, a man’s procreative ability could be restored. The idea of sterilisation was resisted by Indian men at first, but the method was now better understood, he said.

Egypt’s population crisis has been snowballing. In spite of low salaries, workers and fanners frequently produce families of eight or 10 children which they can barely support, adding to the burdens of a country still struggling to reach an economic take-off point, and with heavy defence commitments. The population today ♦

stands at about 33 million, compared with 26 million at the end of 1960. It is increasing at a rate of a million a year.

Egypt’s population has grown by a number almost equivalent to the whole population of Israel in the 27 months since the ArabIsraeli six-day war. Economically, Egypt cannot support this increase. Boosts for agricultural and industrial production from projects like the Aswan High Dam are in danger of being nullified by the population explosion.

Egyptian maternity hospitals declared a state of emergency this year to cope ’.’ith a startling increase in births. A million babies were born in the last 12 months, compared with a yearly average of 800,000.

One hospital which normally received 20 to 30 maternity cases daily found itself coping with 60. Extra beds were rushed into maternity wards and doctors had to cancel summer holidays. President Nasser has taken a personal interest in the population crisis. He. told the 1700 member national congress of the Arab Socialist Union recently that urgent steps must be taken to deal with the high birth-rate. Dr Sallam says that with sterilisation techniques Egypt could reduce its birth rate from 40 per 1000 in 1969 to 30 per 1000 in 1978. Such a result would demand that men actively involve'' 4 themselves in the- campaign, he says.

In spite of Government publicity, only about 300,000 women visit family planning centres every month—far too small a number in relation to the total of women in the fertility age group.