Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International - November 1, 2006
Using survey data from 59 countries in the first global report on sexual and reproductive health, the U.N. World Health Organization Wednesday said 500,000 women every year die during childbirth and pregnancy alone.
Furthermore, approximately 120 million couples around the world do not have access to contraceptives. The outcome, in part, is roughly 80 million women having unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. Of these, 45 million result in abortion, "19 million of them unsafe, leading to 68,000 deaths and millions of injuries and permanent disabilities," the report said.
Despite these statistics, "between 1995 and 2003, donor support for family planning fell from $560 million to $460 million," the study said.
In addition, funding for contraceptive development has been in decline, the report said, particularly in comparison to investment in HIV/AIDS research.
"Far from making progress we seem to have been going backwards since the notion of reproductive health was born (at the International Conference on Population and Development) in Cairo in 1994," said WHO Assistant Director-General for Family and Community Health Joy Phumaphi.
The study will appear Nov. 4 as part one of a five-part series in the British medical journal, The Lancet. The next four parts will cover sexual behavior, family planning, unsafe abortions and sexually transmitted infections. The U.N. health arm's broader initiative is to help raise awareness and funding of sexual and reproductive health.
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