The Economist: October 11, 2001
HEADLINE: A Fertile Future?

In the developing world, access to existing contraceptives would save lives.

NEW contraceptives may be desirable. But it would also help if existing ones were distributed to those who need them. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), roughly 350m couples lack access to a full range of modern contraceptives (see chart). Millions of others are missing even the most basic knowledge of what is possible. As a result, there are as many as 100m unwanted pregnancies each year. A fifth of these end in unsafe abortion. More than half-a-million women a year die in consequence.

According to Tracy Clarke, of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, improving access to contraception in the developing world will take a lot of money. The contraceptives themselves are cheap. The problem is that aid agencies need lots of them, and donor countries have been cutting their budgets. According to UNFPA, unless donors increase their contributions, international efforts to provide contraceptives to all those who need them will be short of $100m a year by 2015.

Greater political will is also necessary. Poor-country governments need to start thinking about contraception as an essential public-health measure, and to provide money and manpower to ensure a continuous supply in the field. Abolishing such obstacles as heavy taxes on imported contraceptives would help. And access in the developing world would improve even more if the American government rescinded its ban on financing any groups that offer abortion. That ties the hands of family-planning organisations which offer contraception as well as termination.

The provision of old contraceptives and the development of new ones do not yet feature prominently in today's arguments over better access to medicines in the developing world. They should. Fertility is certainly not a disease, but there are millions around the world who are still struggling to avoid pregnancy like the plague.

GRAPHIC: In the developing world, access to existing contraceptives would save lives

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Other resources include: link -- United Nations Population Fund; link -- Population Action International; link -- fact sheets on "Saving Women's Lives" including contraceptive security; link -- a journalist website with links to other sites and information

The above analysis was written by Elena M. H. Cabatu 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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