Reproductive Health Care
in Developing Countries

Dramatic reduction of maternal deaths is within reach

Guttmacher Institute and UNFPA Release New Study
December 3, 2009

Targeted Investments Can Also Radically Reduce Unintended Pregnancies and Unsafe Abortion and Lower Poverty Levels

London, 3 December, 2009 – Maternal deaths in developing countries could be slashed by 70% and newborn deaths cut nearly in half if the world doubled investment in family planning and pregnancy-related care, shows a new report by the Guttmacher Institute and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Currently, more than half a million maternal deaths and 3.5 million newborn deaths, many of them easily preventable, occur each year in developing countries.

The new report, Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Family Planning and Maternal and Newborn Health, also found that investments in family planning boost the overall effectiveness of every dollar spent on the provision of pregnancy-related and newborn health care. Simultaneously investing in both family planning and maternal and newborn services can achieve the same dramatic outcomes for $1.5 billion less than investing in maternal and newborn health services alone. |MORE

All Adding It Up materials are available at http://www.guttmacher.org and http://www.unfpa.org.

"In a way, the American antiabortion movement has had more of an impact abroad than at home."

Michelle Goldberg expands on this assertion in her book, "The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World." In the book, Goldberg "illustrates how U.S. policies act as a catalyst for or an impediment to women's rights worldwide and puts forth a convincing argument that women's liberation worldwide is key to solving some of our most daunting problems," Van Deven writes. According to Goldberg, women's "intimate lives have become inextricably tied to global forces," and when writing the book, she found how U.S. movements were "branching out into global issues." |MORE

Women's health key to success of U.S. foreign policy

(March 27, 2009) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that women's reproductive health and rights are key issues in the Obama administration's foreign policy and important parts of U.S. efforts to develop democracy abroad. |MORE

US Funding for UNFPA Will be Restored

Last night [March 5, 2009] sane heads prevailed and the Senate voted to defeat the Wicker Amendment to the omnibus bill that could once again have been used to limit US funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The vote was 55 to 39 against the amendment. |MORE

Bush again withholds money from Population Fund |MORE, a decision called "appalling" by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. |MORE

  • “Women’s Health and Rights at a Crossroads – The Agenda for Our Next President”

    The $50 billion which the U.S. envisions spending over the next five years mostly in sub-Saharan Africa to support the President Bush’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (“PEPFAR”) is unwisely invested according to Adrienne Germain, President of International Women’s Health Coalition. She contends that PEPFAR fails to promote and protect the health of women and children. In Part 1 of “Women’s Health and Rights at a Crossroads – The Agenda for Our Next President” she unveils her vision of what our next President must do to help the U.S. regain its moral authority in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the developing world.

  • Rethinking the AIDS Emergency and the U.S. Response

By Beth Fredrick
IWHC
April 7, 2008

[In April], the House [of Representtives] took a big step toward increasing the United States' commitment to ending the suffering caused by AIDS in Africa. It reauthorized the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which will provide $50 billion over the next five years-the largest aid package from any country directed at a cluster of diseases -- HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria...

By the end of the five years, at the 10-year anniversary of PEPFAR, Americans will have provided $80 billion to this "emergency." Fast forward to 2013. If current trends continue, what will we have accomplished with the legislation currently under consideration?

  • Greater access to anti-retroviral medication [but].
  • Greater numbers of people living with HIV.|MORE

 

  • Anti-Choice Ideology Infecting HIV/AIDS Policy

Feministe,
April 3, 2008
By Kelly Castagnaro

Despite evidence—and the efforts of Rep. Betty McCollum, experts and advocates around the world—the full House voted yesterday to reauthorize a $50 billion global HIV/AIDS relief initiative that threatens to further restrict, rather than support, expansion of HIV prevention through family planning services.
Several advocates and the mainstream media have overwhelmingly touted the President’s Plan for Emergency AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as a legacy-building success, and in one case, the “AIDS relief miracle.”

Today, nearly two million more people have access to anti-retroviral medication than five years ago due to U.S. government support. However, the number of people newly infected with HIV continues to outpace the number of people on treatment —hardly a miraculous approach to sustainable public health programming. |MORE

Did you know that married women in much of the developing world are increasingly more likely to become infected with HIV than their single peers? The New Video from PAI Sheds Light on Married Women Living with HIV/AIDS. See it here

“Every maternal death is an event we can avoid and one that we should never allow to happen. Women who die under our care are faces that stay in our memories and haunt our dreams. These are women in the prime of their lives..." Go here to learn how EngenderHealth is "Forging Partnerships to Improve Emergency Obstetric Care Services and Prevent Fistula" in Niger.