NCERT Book Class 12 Biology Chapter 3 Reproductive Health

CHAPTER 3

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

3.1 Reproductive Health –
Problems and Strategies
3.2 Population Explosion and You have learnt about human reproductive system and its
Birth Control functions in Chapter 2. Now, let’s discuss a closely related
topic – reproductive health. What do we understand by
3.3 Medical Termination of this term? The term simply refers to healthy reproductive
Pregnancy organs with normal functions. However, it has a broader
perspective and includes the emotional and social aspects
3.4 Sexually Transmitted of reproduction also. According to the World Health
Diseases Organisation (WHO), reproductive health means a total
3.5 Infertility well-being in all aspects of reproduction, i.e., physical,
emotional, behavioural and social. Therefore, a society with
people having physically and functionally normal
reproductive organs and normal emotional and behavioural
interactions among them in all sex-related aspects might
be called reproductively healthy. Why is it significant to
maintain reproductive health and what are the methods
taken up to achieve it? Let us examine them.

3.1 REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH – PROBLEMS AND
STRATEGIES
India was amongst the first countries in the world to
initiate action plans and programmes at a national level
to attain total reproductive health as a social goal.
These programmes called ‘family planning’ were
initiated in 1951 and were periodically assessed over
the past decades. Improved programmes covering wider