The retired Anglican Bishop of Northern Uganda Diocese Rev Nelson Onono Onweng has advised the people in Lokodi village, Bungatira Sub County in Gulu district to practice family planning in an effort to reduce poverty in their homes and among the growing population in northern Uganda. 

 

Onono said that people are having so many children even when they know that they are unable to care for them. 

The Bishop was addressing over 300 people who had attended workshop offering access to free medical treatment on Malaria, Family planning and HIV testing among other, which was organized by the UPDF’s 4^th Division Medical Outreach Team and the Bishop Onono Foundation. 

“We are talking about prosperity for all but if we have great number of children we can not keep then, it is hard for it to be realized,” Onono said. 

Onono said that family planning will produce a healthy environment in a population where children will be properly catered for and fed well and educated without headache to the parents. 

He urged the people in Lokodi to desist from having the mindset of producing to replace the over 200 deaths recorded when the LRA allegedly carried out their massacre in 2004. 

The bishop said that he feels the pain that the community in Lukodi have gone through they have undergone psychological trauma that has not been addressed.  He gave an example of a woman he said had developed mental illness following the loss of her only three children in the massacre and called on willing partners who have the capacity, to come forward and address the psychological aspects of such incidents.

Stella Maris Opoka the 4^th Division Senior Medical Clinical Officer said that the outreach program is aimed at making the community understand that the UPDF has other duties to the community apart from fighting battles and the outreach programme is one of the ways the army is contributing to the peace in the region.