Reproductive Health Issues: Focus on Men

Abstract

Most family planning and reproductive health researches and services in India, as elsewhere, target women, that too ever married women in reproductive ages. Consequently, these services as well as researches have not addressed a large number of issues concerning men. Ironically the Indian family planning program, which witnessed a massive response from men to accept vasectomy, took a complete U-turn during the 70s and vasectomy was replaced by tubectomy and laparascopy .It has often been argued that probably, it is easier
to reach women than men. Particularly, from an intervention standpoint, one might anticipate that it would be easier to motivate changes in health care behavior among women then among men. A very high maternal mortality and poor health status of women and children also necessitated most health programs on reduction of maternal and child morality, and therefore left the men out of focus. In the 1970s, following the Bucharest conference, integrating family planning with the maternal and child health was strongly emphasized.