Bangladesh’s once-praised family planning system is buckling under severe contraceptive shortages, raising fears of a rise in unplanned pregnancies in one of the world’s most densely populated countries.

For decades, the South Asian nation was hailed as a success for slashing birth rates through an expansive state-backed family planning programme that sent field workers door to door with pills, condoms and advice on birth spacing.

But that system is now faltering, with government clinics across the country of 170 million people running out of basic contraceptives after procurement failures and administrative disruption left supplies depleted in nearly a third of districts.

“We haven’t had supplies of condoms for the last four to five months,” said Ahmed bin Sultan, 33, a family planning officer at the Savar Upazila Health Complex in Dhaka. “We are continuously requesting service seekers to buy them from dispensaries.”

The centre is barely functioning, like most government-run facilities that have offered nearly free family planning services to underprivileged people for decades.