A summit aimed at halving the number of women in developing countries without access to birth-control/contraception opened in London on Wednesday, and African women are featuring prominently because of their comparatively low rates of contraceptive use.
Hosted by the UK
A summit aimed at halving the number of women in developing countries without access to birth-control/contraception opened in London on Wednesday, and African women are featuring prominently because of their comparatively low rates of contraceptive use.
Hosted by the UK Department of International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the one-dayLondon Summit on Family Planning brings together national governments, donors, members of civil society, the private sector, the research and development community and others.
Summit participants are calling for unprecedented global political commitment and resources to support contraceptive use among women and girls.
“Reaching this goal could result in over 200,000 fewer women and girls dying in pregnancy and childbirth and nearly three million fewer infants dying in their first year of life,” the summit organizers said.
In Africa alone, only 17 percent of women use contraceptives – the lowest level in the world,according to the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute, which aims to “advance sexual and reproductive health rights through research.”
The number of women with unmet need for contraception increased for nearly all of Africa from 2008 to 2012, the institute said. Nigeria Africa’s most populous country – witnessed the least change over that period, raising concerns about access to contraceptives in the country, it said.
Countries such as Ethiopia, Malawi and Rwanda have made significant progress in contraceptive prevalence but still lag far behind developed nations.
With less access to contraceptives, women and girls have little chance of spacing births, and the more times a woman becomes pregnant, the greater the risk to