Since 1984, JOICFP has been implementing the integrated project (IP) in China in cooperation with the China Family Planning Association (CFPA) and the National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC).

After the 1994 Cairo ICPD, the IP evolved into sustainable human centered reproductive health and family planning (RH/FP), offering health education and quality services to community people.

By 2002, the IP covered all provinces in China, and some provinces are sustaining and expanding project activities through their own efforts.

From 30th October to 8th November, a Japanese team comprising representatives from the Japan Health Service Association and local health associations, Fukushima Prefecture government, the Japan Family Planning Association, and JOICFP, visited a new RH and family care training center in Taicang City, Jiangsu Province, an IEC center in Shanghai, and IP project sites in Fujian Province.

This was to determine what future cooperation could be best conducted by observing the current situation in RH/FP.

Some members of the Japanese team had visited Taicang 20 years prior to this trip, and they were impressed at how the then rural area had developed and with the construction of the modern training center, which is expected to contribute to capacity building in RH/FP, especially in mid- and western China. For more details of the training center, click here.

At the Shanghai IEC Center for Population and FP, the team saw how RH/FP services had been implemented by developing IEC/BCC materials, such as VCDs, touch monitors, and printed material. To strengthen its BCC programs, the center is planning to use JOICFP’s DigiPlan network in future. (Click here to read about the JOICFP visit to the center in

The center also contains an exhibition on the history of contraception, as well as displaying modern contraceptive goods to educate people on RH.

This exhibit shows that lemon and the bladder of a sheep
were once used as prophylactics

Fujian Province implemented the IP in two townships in Shaowu City, Nanping Prefecture, from 1993 to 1995, and is planning to expand to nine cities and counties and one county in each of seven other prefectures, based on experiences from the IP. This will start with the establishment of parasitic infection prevention in Nanping through new sanitary facilities and health education, and a member of the Japanese team also noted the need for this.

When the IP experimental period ended, Shaowu City continued to expand the IP by its own efforts. Using financial support from the city government and from the Japanese government through Grant Aid for Grassroots Projects, in 1998 it constructed a new family health service center building, and since then has built RH counseling rooms in each of 15 townships to meet people’s needs.

Built with Japanese assistance, this family health service cente
provides quality services to the community

Preschool children perform health exercises in Shaowu

Members of the Japanese team
inspect a medical service station in a village in Shaowu

Wuyishan City in Nanping studied the IP lessons of Shaowu City, and started to stress health education to raise people’s knowledge on RH and ecology. Over 90% of people have constructed new sanitary facilities and nearly half the people use environmentally friendly “three-tank-harmless-toilets.”

A three-tank-harmless-toilet under construction

The Japanese experts emphasized that the experiences of Taicang and Fujian will serve as a good model for improving RH/FP services in other areas, such as mid- and western China. They said that appropriate data from the past must be used in training so that the east of China can show the west the long process of RH/P development.