African health ministers, due to meet in Maputo next week, will discuss a plan to put into operation reproductive health policies across the continent, Mozambican Health Minister Ivo Garrido has announced.

Garrido told reporters that the subjects included the best practices for reproductive health, reproductive rights, and the need to eliminate those traditional practices that are harmful for health, reported Mozambique News Agency Thursday.

"Best practices," Garrido clarified, include promoting family planning, improving mother and child care, controlling the spread of sexually transmitted infections, and preventing the mother-to- child transmission of the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

Garrido admitted that currently only 17 percent of Mozambican women have joined his ministry's family planning program. Most of these are in the urban centers and rates of contraceptive use are vanishingly low in the countryside.

The minister stressed that, to safeguard their health, women should space the birth of their children. Mothers should leave a gap of at least three years between the birth of one child and the next -- but most African countries to date have not followed such guidelines.

A further problem is the huge number of births that take place at the woman's home, without any qualified medical personnel in attendance. Garrido said that currently about 50 percent of all births in Mozambique take place outside of health units.

Source: Xinhua