CWS Working with Family Planning
Diocesan Press Service. May 10, 1966 [43-12]
Church World Service has worked for a number of years to improve agricultural development in the Third World, the emerging nations.
The advances that have been made so far, however, have been largely nullified by the increase in the world's population. This increase is particularly noticeable in those areas of the world where agricultural production is still low, and the supply of food already limited.
Realizing that the final result is to get more food to each individual, Church World Service has come to feel that family planning, or responsible parenthood, must go along with agricultural development.
CWS has already begun work in this area in Hong Kong. In one of the most crowded cities of the world, Hong Kong Church World Service and the Hong Kong Family Planning Association opened a clinic in March in the crowded Ngau Tau Kok resettlement area. Prior to the opening of the clinic, field workers carried out an intensive educational program intended to reach every family in the area.
Work is also in progress in Mexico. Church World Service contributions are aiding a clinic in Monterrey which is sponsored by the Episcopal Church in Mexico and several local businesses. When the Clinic opened in October, there were four patients; it is now serving more than 100 women. By the end of 1966 it hopes to reach 200 women monthly, the present capacity, and to expand thereafter. The staff now consists of a woman doctor and three social workers. The doctor and two of the social workers, however, are only on a half time basis.
The churches have helped spread the miracles of modern medicine, and to reduce the death rate in many parts of the world. It is hoped that they now can spread the concept of responsible parenthood which this same modern medicine has, in part, made possible, and to help curtail the population explosion.