Dr Florence D. Guillaume, Minister of Public Health and Population, has proceeded last Thursday, to the installation of Dr. Carl Murat Cantave, former Departmental director of the Health in Artibonite, as Secretary of State.
In his inaugural address [extracts], Dr. Carl Murat Cantave explained "No political, economic, social, environmental ans cultural planning can be done without referring to the demographic variable. In 1950, the Haitian population was about three million, in 1981, it rose to 5.1 million. We currently have a population of 10,200,000 inhabitants [...] The population projections are dramatic when you consider that with a current growth rate of 2.4 - 2.5, we will have between 2040 and 2050 a population estimated to 20 million inhabitants, for the same area, for goods and services that do not increase, hence the importance of the intervention of the Secretary of State for Population to make the adequacy between the goods and services available and the population [...]
[...] We will establish family planning services across the country to meet the expectations of the population. Always in the quantitative development of the population, we will do an education campaign to reduce the "synthetic index" of fertility from 5 to 2 [...] track in the field the births and deaths, and conduct a census every 10 years.
We will develop a major program of monitoring of the population through a platform, through a sectoral table that we will create, which will allow us to solve a number problems we have, for example the control of migration flows internal and external of the population [...] With the support of others entities, if we put really our heads together, we will be able to do something in terms of migration [...]"
Concerning the budget to implement these projects, the Dr. Carl Murat Cantave indicated "It is necessary that there is a vision, a leadership, a ability to negotiate, for example when there is money somewhere, you must be able to get it to deliver services to the people..."
