Iran secured the support of religious leaders for population initiatives and managed to reduce its growth rate from 3.2 percent to 1.4 percent in just eight years. The late religious leader, Imam Ayatollah Khomeini, laid down four conditions for accepting population programmes: that drugs such as birth control pills do not have side effects; that both men and women should accept birth control, if it is to be used; that only men should deal with men and women with women; and that the contraception methods used, including sterilization, be reversible. When health officials demonstrated that all this was possible, Iran's powerful religious leaders accepted population programmes. However the term "population control" was considered unacceptable and replaced by "health programmes".