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UN representative baptized as princess of Bontoc's Chico River


BONTOC, Mountain Province - Suneeta Mukherjee, the representative of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) in the Philippines, was baptized as "wagchas" or the "Princess of Chico River" by local government officials in an elaborate ceremony here. Does that mean that Mukherjee, an Indian national and a strict vegetarian, would be able to partake of pork, the favorite food in Bontoc? "No," said Gov. Maximo Dalog. "But this is our way of saying that we are serious in our thrust for population management and development." Mountain Province and nearby Ifugao were among the few provinces in Northern Philippines that passed a code for comprehensive reproductive health. Dalog said that the implementing rules and regulations of the code, as well as the Gender and Development Code were approved recently. Mukherjee said local government units should not wait for the House and Senate to pass the National Reproductive Health Code. "You should pass yours now…Three Filipinos are born every minute. Are we prepared to feed them?" Mukherjee said. Rice production had grown by less than 2 percent annually, while population rose by more than 2 percent, thus hunger gap is growing, according to Mukherjee. Mukherjee's task in the UNFPA is to reduce maternal mortality rate in the Philippines. She was hoping that the country would meet its millennium development goal of reducing mortality rate among mothers by 2015. In 2006, the maternal mortality rate in the Philippines stood at 162 per 100,000 births. The goal is to reducing it to 52 by 2015. She said that yearly, about 4,000 Filipino mothers die while giving birthing. But a huge part of the cases, are actually preventable, according to Mukherjee. Meanwhile, she said many pregnant women in the Philippines resort to abortion, which is illegal and is not recommended by UNFPA as a method in population control. "But still 483,000 abortions happen in the country every year. This is an institutional report," she said. About a third of the yearly 5.1 million pregnancies in the country are unplanned, and many resort to “illicit" abortions despite government denial that such things happen, according to the UNFPA representative. - GMANews.TV
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