UNICEF POLICY AND PERSPECTIVES - CHILD SURVIVAL, POPULATION-GROWTH, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

Rapid population growth is clearly a major problem in the world today. But to argue, as some do, that attempts to reduce child mortality by such means as vaccination should be abandoned, as a means of reducing population growth, is a fallacy for the following reasons. (i) Reducin g child mortality has only a small effect on the population growth rat e. (ii) Increasing child survival leads to a reduction in the numbers of children conceived. (iii) Population:land ratios are not the main s ource of environmental pressure. (iv) It is the affluence of developed countries which contributes mainly to the pressure on available resou rces. The policy of UNICEF is thus to improve maternal and child healt h, to support and extend family planning programmes, and to seek to re duce the prevalence of very early marriage and teenage pregnancy.