International Access to Family
Planning and Reproductive Health
With backing from Hewlett in 2006, Save the Children successfully promoted family planning in Mozambique and throughout the developing world.
More than 100 million women worldwide lack access to family planning, and many times that number lack other essential reproductive health services. The urgent need is underscored by an epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. In 2006, we continued to tackle these problems among the world’s poorest people—especially in sub-Saharan Africa—and made significant progress in two areas:
- Expanding access to underused reproductive health options. Grantees worked to reduce the political and practical barriers that keep four safe, reliable technologies out of the reach of those in need: emergency contraception, intrauterine devices, female condoms, and surgical and medication abortions.
- Incorporating family planning and reproductive health services into HIV/AIDS programs. Unsafe sex is the common cause of both unintended pregnancies and exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. Yet efforts to combat them are rarely coordinated. The Population Program made a number of grants to support links between reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention, including research, demonstration projects, and gatherings of technical experts and policymakers that stimulate new solutions.
2006 Highlights
With levels of sexual violence and unsafe abortion high throughout much of Africa, the Program made grants to broaden the limited availability of emergency contraception. Emergency contraception can help reduce unintended pregnancies as well as provide an opportunity to fulfill a still broad unmet need for regular contraception. In 2006, these grants went to both the public and private sectors in Kenya.
The Program’s support for the linking of sexual and reproductive health issues with those surrounding HIV/AIDS prompted it to help the World Health Organization and partner agencies convene a global conference on the sexual and reproductive health and the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS. This first-of-its-type global conference was accompanied by a series of background papers that together it is hoped will guide the creation of authoritative policies to address the sexual and reproductive health needs of HIV-positive people. Foundation grantees also have been working with the largest multilateral HIV/AIDS funder—the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria—to increase funding for family planning and reproductive health.
Finally, last fall the Program helped raise the profile of sexual and reproductive health issues among decisionmakers in Africa by supporting a special session on the topic at the Conference of African Union Ministers of Health. At this conference, the ministers adopted a plan to integrate sexual and reproductive health services into the delivery of primary health care to help African nations reduce poverty and reach the Millennium Development Goals on maternal mortality, infant and child mortality, and HIV/AIDS. Regional efforts such as this conference were bolstered by a series of papers the Program commissioned on sexual and reproductive health that a leading medical journal, The Lancet, published in November. The series highlighted sound, evidence-based sexual and reproductive health policies in the international public health dialogue and underscored the need for universal access to reproductive health to promote individual health and well-being, reduce population growth, and contribute to sustainable development and the alleviation of poverty.
2007 Goals
- Support organizations that emphasize the delivery of comprehensive family planning and reproductive health services, safe abortion, and links among HIV/AIDS and family planning and reproductive health programs
- Support research on how to increase the use of underused contraceptive methods
- Advocate for an evidence-based, integrated approach to HIV/AIDS and reproductive health that can guide program, policy, and funding decisions
- Foster greater political commitment nationally and internationally for policy reform and other support of universal access to sexual and reproductive information and services
For more information, please visit the Foundation Web site.
