TEHRAN – In a report released on Tuesday the Health Ministry set out plans to increase birth rate among them increasing fertility, decreasing infant mortality and miscarriages, and promoting health of infants and mothers, IRNA reported.

Mohammad Esmail Motlagh, an official in charge of population affairs at the Health Ministry, said over the last 10 years the average marriage age has increased in the provinces of Tehran, Semnan, and Alborz more than other cities.

In order to increase birth rate healthy marriage workshops have been held in medical science universities of Ahvaz, Esfahan, Tehran, Tabriz, Qom and so many other universities, Motlagh added.

The workshops target the role of parents in success or failure of their children’s married life, stress the benefits of marrying on the right time, and warns about the disadvantages of late marriages and single life.

“We are planning to reduce the time lapse between marriage and first birth to less than 3 years and similarly the gap between the first and second birth to less than 5 years,” Motlagh said.

He also emphasized the importance of preventing infertilities which are caused by unhealthy lifestyles, environmental factors, pollution and infections.

He proposed genetic consultation, pre-pregnancy care, avoiding unintended pregnancies as important solutions to reduce miscarriages to 10 percent.

Motlagh explained that as a result of some post-pregnancy side effects mothers may become reluctant to repeat the experience, so it is important to reduce such unpleasant experiences to a minimum.

“Currently the mortality rate of infants is 10 in every 1000 births and we aim to decrease it to 7 in every 1000 births”, Motlagh asserted. “Some infants’ death occurs while transferring from one hospital to another to get proper treatment. It is one of our priorities to improve the transporting system.”