Some Steps Missing in Plan to Help Rwanda

January 27, 1995

In the opinion-page article ``Ten Steps to Take Now to Avoid More Rwandas,'' Jan. 11, I was amazed that not one of the 10 steps mention family-planning information and services. Providing clean water, building classrooms, and reforming the United Nations will, in the long run, be of no avail unless a start is made now to provide the knowledge and means to encourage small families.

Surveys indicate that many women in the third world did not plan or want their last child. Better education for women, better health for women, the means to space children, the encouragement of later marriages, and the advantages to healthy, smaller families promoted by health and administrative officials in refugee camps, should be the first of 10 steps. Sarah G. Epstein, Washington

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