Senegal seeks to curb the baby boom

Only 12 per cent of Senegalese women use contraceptives, Senegal’s Health and Social Action Minister Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck told a family planning conference in London last year.

A 25-year-old mother of five hailing from Senegal’s eastern Tambacounda province believes that contraceptives damage the womb and cause health problems in the long term, such as a rise in blood pressure and chronic headaches.

"This is what I heard some women saying in the bus I boarded to go to town,” the woman, now living in the capital city of Dakar after her tragic divorce, tells Inter Press Service.

She was only 16 when she was forced to marry her 35-year-old cousin. When she tried to discuss contraception with her former husband, “he beat me up and swore that he would kill me if I ever mentioned it again. So we kept having babies.”

As a result of misconceptions about children and family planning, religious dogma and a lack of reproductive health services, thousands of women across Senegal share her plight.

Children are a symbol of wealth in this West African country of 12 million people, a perception that has led to a “baby boom”, experts here say.

"This ancient belief implies that more boys mean more manpower (for) a farm, or that you stand a chance of seeing (your son) become a rich man or even the president of the republic or a minister, while many girls bring their parents more money or livestock for dowry when they get married, ” marriage counsellor Fatoumata Sow tells IPS in Dakar.

“The moment (women) get married, they start making children as if a high-speed train has taken off late at a station, and is flying to catch up.

“And though I’m using Senegal as a case study, the trend is almost the same all over West Africa,” according to Sow, the mother of nine children.

Seen as taboo

She says family planning is taboo in many parts of West Africa, especially in rural communities where illiteracy is rife and awareness about family planning services – let alone access to contraception and birth control – is non-existent.

“Lack of effective family planning policies and (this perception) of children being a symbol of wealth has seriously damaged the social fabric of Senegal,” a doctor at one of the country’s public hospitals, who was afraid to give his real name for fear of persecution by the authorities, says.

“I always ask every pregnant woman who stands before me for consultation if she has ever used contraceptives, and the response I get every day is no.”

Only 12 per cent of Senegalese women use contraceptives, Senegal’s Health and Social Action Minister Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck told a family planning conference in London last year.

Coll-Seck, who confessed that the country’s current contraceptive prevalence rate is one of the lowest in the world, says her government’s vision is to move the needle from 12 to 27 per cent by 2015.