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A staggering 225 million women in developing countries want to avoid pregnancy but are not using modern contraceptives, and tens of millions of women do not receive the basic pregnancy and delivery care they need. These are the findings of Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health 2014, a report released today by the Guttmacher Institute and UNFPA.
“I know women who have been pregnant 10 times before the age of 30,” Marlin Zeiken Angelo, a family planning advocate in South Sudan, told UNFPA earlier this year. Ms. Angelo, who was training to be a midwife, knows from experience that lack of access to modern contraceptives can derail women’s goals and jeopardize their welfare.
“I want them to consider the benefits of family planning,” she said.
The benefits of family planning and other essential sexual and reproductive health services – such as pregnancy and newborn care, services for pregnant women living with HIV, and treatment for four other sexually transmitted infections – can dramatically improve maternal and newborn survival, reduce rates of unsafe abortion and nearly eliminate the transmission of HIV from mothers to newborns.
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Source & Copyright: UNFPA