Iran ranks first in the Middle East in terms of family planning programs.

Compiled by Atefeh Rezvan-Nia

The reluctance of Iranian parents to have more than one child might negatively impact the single child in adulthood.
Hossein Malek-Afzali, the head of Tehran Medical University’s Health Institute, also told IRNA that this issue will make uncles and aunts a thing of the past.
“The presence of one child in the family will surely cause emotional problems for that child in future,“ he said.
The official recommended that parents have at least two children if they can.
“Iran ranks first in the Middle East in terms of family planning programs. It has also made great breakthroughs in the same field at the international level,“ he added.
Malek-Afzali is a winner of the Population Prize awarded by World Health Organization in 2007 for his reports on Iran’s family planning activities.
He pointed out that nowhere in the world has population growth been reduced to 1.2 percent from 3.2 percent in the past 15 years as in Iran.

Births Declining
“This is a positive step for Iran. The number of births registered in Iran during the early years after the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution was 2.1 million per year, while it has currently declined to 1.3 million births,“ he said.
Commenting on preventive measures for pregnancy, Malek-Afzali stated that vasectomy is one of the best preventive methods.
He regretted that only 2 percent of men undergo vasectomy in Iran.
“Iranian men wrongly link vasectomy to infertility or impotency. This is while vasectomy only prevents pregnancy in women and does not harm the children,“ he said.
Malek-Afzali termed other preventive measures such as taking pills as risky and noted that men should be persuaded more to undergo vasectomy.
“More should be done to persuade men to undergo vasectomy in Iran,“ he said.

Disadvantages
A single child cannot tolerate disappointments and mental pressures, and even considers unintentional remarks as an insult, psychologists say.
The single children only like to establish relationships that benefit themselves, the website Hamdardi reported.
Another disadvantage of being a single child is its impact on their growth and development.
The single children do not have someone in their families to compete or argue with. Hence, they lag behind other children in terms of certain experiences and face problems later.
Mental maturity is not something hereditary and can only be gained through interactions and experience.
A single child usually leads a protected life and is not mentally prepared to face defeat and difficulties.
This leads to frustrations and depression when such children grow up.

Adolescents who play violent videogames may become increasingly aggressive over time, a new study of Japanese and US teens suggests.
Researchers found that among three groups of 9- to 18-year-olds followed over several months, those who regularly played violent videogames were more likely to get into more and more physical fights over time.
The study is among the first to chart changes in gamers’ aggressive behavior over time, lending weight to evidence that violent videogames can encourage violence in some kids. And it’s the first to show that the effects are seen across cultures, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.
“Basically what we found was that in all three samples, a lot of violent videogame played early in a school year leads to higher levels of aggression, as measured later in the school year--even after you control how aggressive the kids were at the beginning of the year,“ lead researcher Dr. Craig A. Anderson, of Iowa State University in Ames, explained.
An argument has been made that videogames cannot be directly contributing to aggression because violence rates are low in Japan where videogames are highly popular, Anderson said in a written statement.

Findings
“By gathering data from Japan,“ he said, “we can test that hypothesis directly and ask, ’Is it the case that Japanese kids are totally unaffected by playing violent videogames?’ And of course, they aren’t. They’re affected pretty much the same way American kids are.“
The findings are based on two separate groups of teenagers from Japan--1,231 teens in all--and 364 9- to 12-year-olds from the US.
At the outset, participants estimated how often they played violent videogames, then their own aggressive behavior was followed for up to six months afterward.
The Japanese teens reported on their own violent behavior using questionnaires, while teachers’ and peers’ reports were used to estimate the US group’s aggressive behavior.
In general, Anderson’s team found that kids who habitually played violent videogames were more likely than their peers to become increasingly involved in physical fights-- even when their behavior in the months leading up to the study was taken into account.
Of course, not all kids who play aggressive videogames act them out in real life.
Nor is media violence alone to blame for teenagers’ aggression, the researchers point out.
But what these videogames may do, the investigators say, is feed the idea that violence is a normal and acceptable way to react to everyday conflicts, like getting bumped in the school hallway.
“It is important to realize that violent videogames do not create school shooters,“ Dr. Douglas A. Gentile, another researcher on the study, said in the statement.
“Violent games are certainly not the only thing that can increase children’s aggression,“ he added, “but these studies show that they are one part of the puzzle in both America and Japan.“

An increasing number of countries worldwide are making spreading HIV a crime, according to a new report from the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Health officials fear the trend could undermine gains made in fighting the AIDS pandemic and provoke a surge in cases. Globally, about 33 million people are thought to have HIV and nearly 3 million people are newly infected every year, AP reported.
“If the law is applied badly, this could set us back and do incredible damage,“ said Paul de Lay, an AIDS expert at UNAIDS, who was not involved in the report.
De Lay said the laws could result in forced testing and drive the epidemic underground as people hide their HIV status, allowing the virus to spread unnoticed.
According to Planned Parenthood, 58 countries worldwide have laws that criminalize HIV or use existing laws to prosecute people for transmitting the virus. Another 33 countries are considering similar legislation.
Since 2005, seven countries in West Africa have passed HIV laws. In Benin, simply exposing others to HIV is a crime, even if transmission doesn’t occur. And in Tanzania, intentional transmission of the virus can lead to life imprisonment.