Some 8.4 million women and girls gained access to contraceptives last year, a fantastic increase. However, a new report says that efforts need to speed up access. From the Guardian:
The Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) report, the group’s first set of annual data since its formation two years ago, found that the number of women and girls with access to contraceptives was still below FP2020’s projected benchmark of 9.4 million. However, widening access to family planning services helped avert 125,000 maternal deaths last year, compared with 120,000 in 2012, and avert 24m unsafe abortions, compared with 23m in the previous year.
The FP2020 partnership was created as a result of the London family planning summit, where donors pledged $2.6bn (£1.2bn) to bring contraception to 120 million more women and girls in developing countries by 2020.
The report, Partnership in Progress, assessed how the funding boost had influenced women’s reproductive health standards in the world’s poorest countries.
“We anticipated that growth would be slowest in the first years of the initiative as countries and partners expand their programmes. In many countries, an enormous effort is required simply to maintain existing levels of service,” the report said. “The data show that FP2020 is on the right track and making steady progress; however, we must collectively accelerate our efforts in order to reach 120 million more women and girls by 2020.”
The increase in access to contraceptives is keeping up with population increases in some countries, including Bhutan, Djibouti, Kenya and Rwanda, where contraceptive growth rates exceeded 2.5% last year compared with an average of 0.65% in developing countries.
But the report warned that population growth threatened to outpace the expansion of family planning programmes in some countries. It noted that while the world has made progress on the millennium development goal to reduce maternal mortality, the target to provide universal access to reproductive health is far from being achieved.
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Global Health and Development Beat
Namibia’s Supreme Court on Monday found that HIV-positive women were forcibly sterilized after giving birth — a decision hailed by activists as a victory for women throughout Africa.
Scientists in Kenya say that next year, a new malaria vaccine will be available that could add an important component to malaria control and potentially eradicate the disease.
The importance of western aid in helping to build effective health systems in the developing world has been highlighted by a respected international think tank finding that Sierra Leone, an early source of the Ebola outbreak, was the country least likely to be able to deal with the virus.
The deaths of 11 babies over three days in October at the Dominican Republic’s Robert Reid Cabral hospital brought what some say is long-overdue attention to one of the country’s most important medical institutions. It also raises questions about overall quality of health care for the poor in the Dominican Republic.
Bolivia’s ombudsman says he is alarmed at a rise in sexual violence against young girls, after a four-year-old was raped and murdered, reports the BBC.
Health authorities in Moçambique are tackling cervical cancer through information campaigns and by integrating routine screening in family planning services. They hope to reach all districts by 2017.
Vaginal rings filled with antiretrovirals, ARV injections and partially effective vaccines are some of the HIV prevention weapons under development that are reason for excitement, reports health-e.
More than 415,500 Gambian children were vaccinated against polio in the first vaccination round, says the government.
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Spotlight on PSI
A Devex article looks at how social marketing will help increase access to family planning, by David Olson, includes the work of PSI. An excerpt:
PSI President Karl Hofmann said that FP2020 has spurred unprecedented collaboration across international and country-level communities, galvanizing all towards a common goal. “Today our country offices work closely with the FP2020 country engagement teams to identify gaps and make sure activities are complementary and in line with country-specific goals and objectives,” he said.
Hofmann cites the example of PSI Mali that is highly engaged in national advocacy on sexual and reproductive health and rights and facilitates Mali’s participation in the Ouagadougou partnership, which operationalizes FP2020 goals in West Africa.
In Kenya, PSKenya operates the Tunza network of franchised facilities that provided nearly 270,000 women with family planning through September. Nearly one in six were new users of modern contraception.
In direct response to the FP2020 call to action, said Purdy, DKT launched programs in four large countries with significant unmet need for family planning — Nigeria (16.1 percent of married women), Myanmar, Pakistan (20.1 percent) and Tanzania (22.3 percent).
“In addition, to reach women in rural areas, DKT is introducing innovative products like the Sayana Press injectable in Nigeria and strategies such as outreach services for long-acting methods.”
Creating new contraceptive users is at the heart of FP2020, and all three social marketing organizations as well as FP2020 struggle with the mechanics of measuring new users. Both PSI and DKT say they are starting to collect such data at the country level, especially through social franchising clinics, but cannot easily produce data for their global operations.
“CYPs remain a robust intermediate metric that is part of the overall picture of contraceptive use, including new users,” noted Purdy. “It may not be as satisfactory as data from the demographic and health surveys, but it’s the best we’ve got for now.”
The FP2020 goal of 120 million more women and girls using contraception is ambitious but achievable. And it will only be met with the full and active participation of social marketers.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Bill Gates laid out a vision to eliminate malaria from the world. The Guardian development blog weighs in on his ideas:
While we are not yet able to set an exact date for this eradication ambition, the world is already advancing elimination efforts and a consensus is building around the concept of accelerating to zero – increasing investment to cut malaria cases and deaths in the most-affected countries, focusing efforts to eliminate malaria where feasible, and investing in tools that will fuel progress towards elimination in all regions for the future. This is not just another development slogan. With significant research and development breakthroughs on the horizon, and 26 countries already on track to becoming malaria-free, it’s tangible action, rather than mere rhetoric.
The research pipeline is central to the accelerate to zero ambition, including early development of new drugs and vaccines that could block transmission of the malaria parasite from host humans back to the mosquito, thus breaking the age-old malaria transmission cycle.
Game-changing developments on the horizon include the first vaccine against malaria, which could be approved next year; a single-dose cure for vivax malaria (the relapsing strain of the disease) by 2017; and resistance-beating insecticides by 2022. If we persevere then, as Gates outlined, the world has the potential to dramatically shrink the malaria map country by country, area by area, ultimately ending transmission in 30 to 40 countries.
In the past decade, ambition and innovation have been matched by truly extraordinary leadership. This includes funding through the establishment of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and from donors such as the US president’s malaria initiative, the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the UK’s Department for International Development – which tripled its funding for malaria between 2008 and 2014. While malaria may be one of the greatest causes of poverty, given the costs it imposes on poor families, it also offers some of the most cost-effective solutions. A study by Accenture estimated the present-day economic value (ie profit) of continued investment in malaria control in Africa at more than $322bn (£257bn) between now and 2035, due to the tremendous health and productivity gains that would result. Clearly, this is a wise investment of political will and funds.
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Capital Events
Tuesday
12:00 PM – Challenges and Opportunities in the Fight against Drug-Resistant TB: Lessons from the IOM Workshops – CGD
3:30 PM – Sustainable Governance: From Rhetoric to Action: Engaging Women as a Means for Stronger Health Systems and Greater Health Outcomes – SID
Wednesday
12:00 PM – Communication Technology for Conflict Prevention and Humanitarian Response: Opportunities and Challenges for Policy and Practice – Georgetown
4:00 PM – 2014 Commitment to Development Awards – CGD
Thursday
7:30 AM – World Affair Councils of America 2014 National Conference – WACA
12:00 PM – EconNet: Does the Effect of Pollution on Infant Mortality Differ Between Developing and Developed Countries? Evidence from Mexico City – IADB
4:30 PM – A look at the Ebola Crisis – SAIS
Friday
7:30 AM – World Affair Councils of America 2014 National Conference (Day 2) – WACA
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.