INTERNATIONAL FAMILY PLANNING FUNDING AND POLICY

Media outlets focused on new details regarding President Bush's FY2002 budget and its provisions for international family planning and related health issues. According to an April 10 New York Times story, the State Department will receive a decrease of $100 million below current FY2001 funding of $7.7 billion for its Agency for International Development (USAID) division. The story also indicated that the FY2002 budget would include level funding for international family planning with $425 million directed at the USAID family planning program and $25 million towards a U.S. contribution to the United Nations Population Fund. [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/10/politics/10WRAP.html link ]

The Washington Post reported April 6 that the U.S. Senate agreed to double current U.S. spending on the global battle against HIV/AIDS to more than $1 billion within the next two years. Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), leading a bipartisan group of co-sponsors, called on the government to show leadership in "confronting one of the most important moral, humanitarian and foreign policy decisions of thee new century." link

The New York Times reported April 10 on U.S. and international policy on the morning-after pill that could prevent at least half of the three million unintended pregnancies in the U.S. that are followed by about a million medical abortions. link

Africa News reported April 8 on a U.S. Congressional delegation visit to Morocco as part of the United Nations Population Fund's initiative to examine that country's progress in women's health care, including transmitted diseases, childbearing, obstetric care, women's empowerment and literacy tuition. link

In continuing coverage of the global gag rule, The Record (Bergen, NJ) featured an April 1 story titled "Upcoming Abortion Battles" describes Bush's executive memorandum that reinstated the Mexico City Rule as "counterfeit" and "exquisitely ambidextrous."

April 14 Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN) and April 13 Science Magazine and Washington Post reported on several studies released in early April discussing how population influences the environment. The Pioneer Press reported that a team of U.S. scientists from UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley, Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, and the universities of Albert, Minnesota and Tennessee concluded that the "world will pay a heavy price for food production in the next 50 years to keep pace with the rising population and personal wealth." [http://link

According to an April 13 Washington Post story, two studies released on April 12 by the Commerce Department's National Oceanographic Data Center and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, "provide the strongest evidence yet that greenhouse gases are causing the Earth's oceans to warm, further bolstering the case that global warming is real and is being caused at least in part by air pollution, researchers said. link

The Xinhua General News Service reported April 5 that the U.N. Population Division's Department of Economic and Social Affairs has released the first-ever wall chart on population, environment and development. It presents key environmental and development indicators from non-U.N. sources regarding fresh water, forests, agriculture and nutrition, poverty and economic development, carbon dioxide emission and participation in international treaties on environment. link

India's first-ever Earth Day celebrations will be followed by a two-day international conference on "Sustainable Development and Sustainable Life Styles," according to an April 14 Hindu story. link

[NOTE: The U.S. will celebrate Earth Day on April 22. For more information on global population and environment, see the most recent www.PLANetWIRE.org <http://www.PLANetWIRE.org> feature on Earth Day.]

National Public Radio reported April 2 that in Bolivia, for every thousand children born, 87 die by age five, the highest rate in South America, four times more than Argentina and 10 times more than the U.S. According to the World Health Organization, 10 million children die each year before they reach the age of five due to poor sanitation, lack of clean water and poverty. link

Growing concern about the spread of AIDS in the Caribbean has prompted calls for a massive education and prevention program by Haitian doctors and by the Foundation for Reproductive Health and Family Education, according to an April 1 Austin American-Statesman article. Health officials estimate that about 500,00 people in the region are infected with HIV. The Foundation has also "attacked" illegal back room abortions, the leading cause of maternal mortality in Haiti.

The India Times reported that the mortality rate at the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, India is one death out of 500 births because the hospital receives patients with serious complications in the last stage of pregnancy. Dr. Sudha Salhan, president of the Association of Obstetrics and Gynecologists Society of Delhi, said, "Sadly, only about 40 percent of the women who deliver in our hospital have come to us for check-ups." CNN also covered an Indian protest to reduce maternal mortality. link

An April 1 story disseminated by Africa News reported that in Alibori and Atacora, Benin, 75 practitioners of female genital mutilation said they were "abandoning" the practice that some 1,000 girls undergo each year. link

According to a recent study by the United Nations reported in an April 4 Inter Press Service story, poverty continues to be the number one killer worldwide. The study says, "Poverty is an important reason that babies are not vaccinated, clean water and sanitation are not provided, drugs and other treatments are unavailable, and mothers die in childbirth."

The Associated Press reported April 6 that "famished" and "tired," thousands of fleeing Afghan refugees continue to arrive at camps set up by the United Nations in Western Afghanistan due to drought and protracted war. As many as 800,000 people are living as internal refugees inside Afghanistan.

The Associated Press also reported April 9 that the U.N. issued a statement revealing that food stocks are dwindling fast in the opposition-controlled northern areas of Afghanistan because of severe drought and protracted civil-war that has blocked supply routes. So far, there have been no deaths from starvation, but infant mortality caused by measles, respiratory infections and "chronic" malnutrition is "alarmingly" high.

Results from India's latest decennial census show that the number of girls is declining relative to the number of boys - "a finding that some people attribute to pre-natal gender selection." The April 4 Inter Press story noted since 1991, the number of girls for every 1,000 in the under-six age group has fallen from 945 to 927. The largest gap was found in the prosperous agricultural state of Punjab with just 793 girls for every 1,000 boys in the under-six age group. The Hindu also reported on this April 8.

On April 1, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer featured a full-page commentary feature on the David and Lucile Packard Foundation-funded Planet campaign, which is composed of CARE, the National Audubon Society, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Population Action International, Save the Children and Communications Consortium Media Center. These diverse groups have come together to help Americans see that more than 500,000 pregnancy-related deaths worldwide don't have to occur. link

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer also ran a sidebar to the April 1 Planet campaign story by National Audubon Society's President John Flicker titled "Bird Predicting the Price of Overpopulation." The Record (Bergen, NJ) ran a similar version of Audubon's Post-Intelligencer op ed on April 4. Flicker noted that scientists now think the decline of songbirds is due to habitat destruction, both overseas and in the United States, caused by rapid rates of human population growth. link

Judy Mann's April 11 column in The Washington Post suggested that Bush be remembered as the "Great Contaminator" for slashing and burning his way through federal environmental protection efforts with "reckless abandon." link

Nicolas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute continued to place his op ed that describes Europe and Japan's current "depopulation" situation as "imminent." Most recently, it ran in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on April 2.

In an April 1 Chicago Tribune opinion piece by freelance writer Sharon Miller Cindrich, she noted that though fertility rates generally have decreased worldwide in the last 30 years, the biggest concern still lies in less developed countries, where the fertility rate is nine times that of more developed regions and the average family includes 3.8 children.

The above analysis was written by Ketayoun Darvich-Kodjouri and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700.

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