220 million women want modern contraception, but can't get it.
PSI Impact magazine, for which I am a contributor, asked its readers to nominate 10 great global health moments of the past year, then asked experts write profiles of each milestone. This list will lift your spirits.
There's a big-deal conference underway in London right now with representatives and leaders from scores of developing and donor countries and top NGOs and philanthropies. Their collective goal: bring modern family planning services to the 220 million women in the developing world.
Wondering what that #FPSummit hashtag is all about?
Later this morning, Melinda Gates is hosting a TedXChange conference devoted to family planning and contraception. Watch live.
Cutting funding for UNFPA will end up costing more in the long run. In the short term, cutting funding to UNFPA will result in more women dying child birth; more unplanned pregnancies; and prevent a key mechanism for female empowerment worldwide.
Today, more than half of women of reproductive age in the developing world, some 600 million, now use modern contraception, up from only ten percent in 1960. Still, there are approximately 215 million women, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, who want to avoid pregnancy but do not have access to contraception.