Nearly half of married couples nationwide taking part in the family planning program opt for contraceptive pills and injections, the National Family Planning Board (BKKBN) revealed here Friday.

BKKBN chairman Sugiri Syarief said 46 percent of 29 million couples in the program preferred injections, while 28 percent chose pills.

"The public prefer *contraceptive* injections out of practicality, because they only need to go to community health centers once a month. It's not like pills that you have to consume everyday," he said, after a ceremony to appoint 62 midwives as the 2009 Oral Contraceptive (OC) Ambassadors, a program sponsored by Bayer Schering Pharma.

Sugiri said rumors of the long-term negative impacts of consuming pills had led many women to believe it could cause obesity.

But despite the rumors, the number of pill consumers increased over the past three years, from 7.7 million in 2006 to 8.7 million in 2008.

Some 113 million pills are now consumed annually, with the government only able to afford 30 percent of them to distribute to poor families.

Other families opted for IUDs (12 percent), implants (8 percent), female contraception mode (4 percent), male contraception mode (1 percent) and condoms (1 percent).

Asia Pacific Council of Contraception (APCOC) representative Biran Affandi dismissed rumors that contraception was unsafe, saying the development of research and methods in oral contraception had minimized side effects.

"We now have oral contraceptive pills that can help increase one's life quality, such as clearing up the skin. Therefore we could say the myth of pills' side effects is baseless," he said.

Bayer general manager Allen Doumitt said the firm was supported by the Indonesian Midwives Association. Last year, only 30 midwives were named OC envoys. They managed to spread information to 4,408 midwives and 6,504 people across the country.

"*The midwives* have become an important part of *our* program to reach out to those in remote areas," Doumitt said.

Sugiri welcomed the private sectors' assistance in the programs.

"About Rp 450 billion *US$37.5 million* of our *Rp 1.19 trillion* budget was for providing free contraception for poor families," he said.

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