Worried about the communitys dwindling population, church leaders in the Indian states of Kerala and Mizoram are encouraging Christians to give birth to more children. In Kerala, the Catholic Church has initiated several measures in church-run hospitals, including medical interventions such as the reversal of tubectomies for women and providing treatment to infertile couples, an English newspaper reports. The church will extend support to women who want to undergo recanalisation or reversal of tubectomy. A recanalisation surgery in other hospitals costs around 50,000 rupees. In our church-run non-profit hospitals we can bring down the cost to 10,000 rupees, said Father Jose Kottayil, the secretarx to the council from Kochi. While parishes across Kerala have been asked to conduct sessions with smaller Christian families to encourage them to have more children, the Kerala Catholic Bishops Councils Commission for Family has also promised to provide an education allowance to the fourth child in a family - indirectly asking each Christian family to have at least four children. According to the 1991 census, Christians accounted for 19.5 per cent of Keralas 29.09 million population. When the 2001 census revealed that the states population had increased to 31.84 million, or a 9.42 per cent increase, the percentage of Christians had actually dropped to 19 per cent. In response, in 2004, church leaders decided to begin their campaign for larger Christian families. According to the latest government statistics, the fertility rate [children per family] among Keralas Christians is 1.5, the lowest among all [religious] communities in the state. Its leading to the fall of the states Christian population and it concerns us, said Fr Kottayil.