Millions of lives could be saved with highly cost-effective investments to close gaps in sexual and reproductive health care that account for nearly a third of illnesses and deaths among women of reproductive age, according to a new United Nations report.
The report, Adding it Up: The Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health Care, released by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the non-profit Alan Guttmacher Institute, stresses the severe global shortage of contraceptive services and the need for far greater aid from donor countries to address the scarcity, which accounts for as much as a fifth of the worldwide burden of illness and premature death.
In one striking indication of potential benefits, the report notes that programmes providing contraceptives to 500 million women in poor countries already prevent each year 187 million unintended pregnancies, 60 million unplanned births, 105 million abortions, 22 million miscarriages, 2,7 million infant deaths and 215.000 pregnancy-related deaths.
Those measures also protect 685.000 children from losing their mothers.
Providing the services to all women at risk of unintended pregnancy at a cost of 3,9 billion dollars more a year would save an additional 1,5 million women and children annually, reduce induced abortions by 64 per cent and cut pregnancy-related illness and preserve 27 million years of healthy life; for just 144 dollars per year of healthy life.
Beyond contraception, the report calls for increased funding for sexual and reproductive health services, particularly in poor countries, by illustrating the broad societal and individual impact of investments in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections as well as measures to secure maternal health.
The report notes that individual consumers, national governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries provide more than three-quarters of the money spent there on sexual and reproductive health care.
But donor countries have fallen far short of the funding commitments made at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, it adds.
Kilde: FNs Nyhedstjeneste
