REPRODUCTION health and family planning programs will play a critical role in ending severe poverty by 2040, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

In a statement released on Friday, NEDA said its head, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua, laid out the government's reproductive health and family planning programs at the recent International Inter-Ministerial Conference on Population and Development, which was co-hosted by the Partners in Population and Development (PPD) and the United Nations Population Fund.