Kathmandu, Mar. 14: The government today formally entered the fourth phase of the Radio Communication Project (RCP) with John Hopkins University (JHU) and American development agency USAID. Under the fourth phase of the RCP, the two donor agencies will continuously support the education based entertainment programmes over the state run Radio Nepal.

The first phase of the RCP was signed in 1995, under which the Health Ministry is running Ghanti Heri Had Nilao, a radio drama serial and Sewa Gare Mewa Painchha, a radio programme targeted at rural based health works. Both the radio programmes focus on issues of family planning, family health and maternity-infant health.

“Family health and population control top the priority list of the government health agenda,” said Health Secretary Sri Kant Ragmi. He also opined that radio education proved to be helpful to make the rural health services more effective and efficient and thus improve overall health status.

However, the data show that Nepal’s achievement in the area is far from satisfactory. According to government statistics contraceptive prevalence is low at 31 per cent, meanwhile the country is counted to have the highest percentage of maternity mortality rate among the South Asian countries. According to Health Ministry, everyday 12 Nepalese women die of pre and post delivery complications.

Pancha Kumari Manandhar of USAID said that radio was the cheapest way to disseminate health related information among the public and most cost effective medium to reach the rural based health workers for update of their family health knowledge and skills. She also claimed that the number of desired children is declining in Nepal; she said the desired number of children declined to 2.4 children from the four children in 1993.

Executive Director of Radio Nepal Mukunda Acharya said that radio is effective in changing health behavior of the public.