POPULATION Services Zimbabwe (PSZ) joins the rest of the world in celebrating World Population Day, recognising the right for everyone to choose freely and responsibly, the number of children they want and how to space or time their births.

This day comes at a time when over 200 million families in developing nations like Zimbabwe want access to modern contraception to space or limit their births, and that they want it now (WHO).
Lack of access and availability to contraception would mean that the average woman would have the undesired number of children. The unmet need for family planning remains unchanged at 13 percent (ZDHS 2010/11) for the past decade.

Today PSZ announces that, to contribute to the long-term family planning goals in Zimbabwe, we pledge to double the number of women using contraception provided through our clinic and outreach network by 2015.

In 2011, over 200 000 women were using a form of modern contraception supplied by PSZ. This doubling of PSZ’s impact will be delivered by maintaining women who are currently using a PSZ supplied contraceptive; offering greater quality and choice of method to other women who are using a method that may not be right for them; and enabling those women, who have never had the opportunity to use contraception, to access the method of their choice.

Population Services Zimbabwe works on the principle of the importance and wisdom of having children by choice instead of chance.
We offer a broad range of family planning choices to include short-term methods (condoms pills, depo-provera), long-term methods (jadelle, loop), permanent methods

(tubal ligation, vasectomy for men) and these are available in our clinic and outreach network nationwide.

If Population Services Zimbabwe fulfils its pledge, it means that there will be fewer unintended pregnancies, fewer women and girls dying in pregnancy and childbirth and ultimately healthier families in Zimbabwe.