Poor planning fuels Bangladesh contraceptive crisis

Bangladesh’s once-praised family planning system is buckling under severe contraceptive shortages, raising fears of a rise in unplanned pregnancies in one of the world’s most densely populated countries. For decades, the South Asian nation was hailed as a success for slashing birth rates through an expansive state-backed family planning programme that sent field workers door to door with pills, condoms and advice on birth spacing. But that system is now faltering, with government clinics across the country of 170 million people running out of basic contraceptives after procurement failures and administrative disruption left supplies depleted in nearly a third of districts. This photograph taken on April 27, 2026 shows a birth control vaccine at the Savar Upazila Health Complex in Dhaka. —AFP “We haven’t had supplies of condoms for the last four to five months,” said Ahmed Bin Sultan, 33, a family planning officer at the Savar Upazila Health Complex in Dhaka. “We are continuously requesting service seekers to buy them from dispensaries.” The centre is barely functioning, like most government-run facilities that have offered nearly free family planning services to underprivileged people for decades. This photograph taken on April 27, 2026 shows people waiting in the lobby at the Savar Upazila Health Complex in Dhaka. —AFP Bin Sultan oversees a population of 100,000 in Savar, many of them workers in the country’s key garment manufacturing sector. Condoms, oral pills, emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices (IUDs) and injectables were unavailable at around a third of the country’s 64 districts, according to government figures for May. Stocks in other districts are also running low. This photograph taken on April 27, 2026 shows a worker arranging packets of condoms at a pharmacy in Dhaka. —AFP Tamanna, 22, a mother of two, comes to the Savar centre for pills — but must return every month. “They used to give three to four sachets of pills, but that has been re