Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty

years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die." - Gore Vidal, American novelist and critic. The world is bursting at it seems thanks to the growing global population. According to the present estimates, the world population is approximately around 6.5 billion. More people would mean more food to be grown to feed, more resources to provide quality health and education, more jobs to be created to provide employment, more cities and towns to accommodate and many such things. Unfortunately, the current global economic meltdown will not allow this to happen too quickly as it should to be. In fact, it has already put the brakes on several important global issues the primary being health and education. This twin-problem of increasing population and the global financial and economic crisis warns to reverse hard-won gains in education and health in developing countries and the worst to be hit by this are women and girls. Even before the crisis happened, women and girls represented the majority of the world's poor. And now this crisis has only forced their situation pushing them deep down into poverty, exposing them to increased health risks, especially if they are pregnant, and to hunger, starvation, and unemployment. The world cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the problems of the women.

Origin and purpose of the World Population Day (WPD):

The main purpose of World Population Day is to create awareness among global communities about the population crisis among the economic meltdown and the worst effect it will lead to, particularly to women and girls and how addressing these issues will help the world! And the world will have to unite to act and continue to brainstorm to come out with innovative and safer ways to tackle the inequality between available resources and the increasing population.

What's at stake?
According to the UNFPA, the key lies in empowering women and children particularly those in developing countries as they will bear the burden of the impact of the recession. The key lies in educating girls and empowering women to meet these challenges by way of policy responses that

build on women's roles as economic agents. The governments across the world should also continue and increase investments in public health, education, child care and other social services as these will help decrease the impact of the crisis on the entire family and raise productivity for a healthier economy.

Empowered women and control of population:

The UNFPA sees the reproductive health and gender issues as critical determinants of population dynamics. Fertility is driven largely by reproductive and health decisions that individual women can or cannot make, depending on the information, services and supplies that are available to them, the cultural context in which they live, and the educational and economic opportunities given to them. Empowered women can make these significant choices of spacing births by effective use of contraception, plan smaller families and healthier communities. And empowerment begins with proper education, access to better health services, and employment and economic freedom which would signal the beginning of effective population control and help reduce the impact of the global economic meltdown. Additionally, empowering women will result in improved maternal health, adequate nutrition to themselves, their children and families.