These 5 Levels of Advocacy Are Moving the Needle on Contraceptive Use

September 25, 2018In the struggle to end poverty, new ideas and powerful new voices are rising up, demanding change. And it ' s working.Imagine: It ’s 1981. Ronald Reagan is president of the United States. Scientists still believe AIDS isa rare lung infection. And over 42% of the world ’s population lives in extreme poverty.Forty-two percent. That number always stops us in our tracks. It ’s massive, and uncomfortably close to half.Even more mind-blowing is how that number has plummeted in just a few decades. Today it stands at 10%. And we ’re poised to reach 0% by 2030, if we achieve theSustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  Two key factors behind all this progress —and in any success to come—are:Advocacy and coordination —justlook at all the progress countries made working toward the Millennium Development Goals.The humble contraceptive.Poverty rates are highest among children —particularly girls.FP2020 reports that in a single year, access to contraceptives helped prevent 26 million unsafe abortions, 84 million unintended pregnancies, and the pregnancy-related deaths of 125,000 women. That ’s one reason advocates like Ellen Starbird, the US Agency for International Development’s director of population and reproductive health, call family planning acritical link in achieving the SDGs.Poverty rates arehighest among children—particularly girls—and the bulk of the 10% of people still living in poverty are in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These a...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news