Singapore Family Planning & Population Board (SFPPB)
Before the existence of the SFPPB, there was The Singapore Family Planning Association. It was established in December 1949 as a voluntary agency and run by social workers. The association had clinics and organised talks on birth controls. Earlier in November 1964, the association approached the Ministry of Health to take over all family planning activities (Annual report, 1971, p. 16). A three-man review committee was appointed on 13 March 1965 to look into the matter and the report submitted on 29 June 1965 unanimously recommended that the government should assume full responsibilities for all family planning activities in the republic. A white paper on family planning was then tabled in Parliament on 27 September 1965, detailing the five-year plan to manage population growth by establishing a statutory authority to take charge of a national family planning programme (Family planning in Singapore, 1966, pp. 1-26). The Singapore Family Planning and Population Board Act was passed in December 1965 and came into force on 7 January 1966. The SFPPB was thus established and inaugurated on 12 January 1966 as a statutory authority to promote and disseminate information on family planning. In addition to taking over the clinical services provided by the Singapore Family Planning Association, the board launched a five-year National Family Planning Programme (Wan, 1976, p. 2). The programme aimed to lower Singapore’s crude birth rate to 20 per thousand by 1970 from 29.9 per thousand in 1965, as well as to reach out to 180,000 new recipients of family planning by the end of the five-year period (Family planning in Singapore, 1966, pp. 1-26, 37). Other than providing good clinical services to couples so that they could obtain professional advice in family planning and gain access to contraceptives, a subsidiary function of the SFPPB also provided screening services for women against cancer (of the womb). Its work was organised under six units – Clinical Services, Cytology, Publicity, Training, Research and Evaluation, as well as Administrative Support (Wan & Saw, 1976, pp. 5, 21).
