Press Release

For Immediate Release September 16, 1999

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Hopkins Report: Six Billion Signals Urgent Need for Family Planning Funding

As world population passes 6 billion, adequate funding and support for family planning programs in developing countries is critical, warns a new report from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

"Worldwide declines in fertility rates have led some people to declare, incorrectly, that population growth is no longer a concern," point out researchers Ushma Upadhyay and Bryant Robey in the latest issue of Population Reports, published by the Johns Hopkins Population Information Program. In fact, every 12 or 13 years another billion people are added to the world's population, almost all in developing countries, according to the report, titled Why Family Planning Matters. World population has grown more in the last 50 years than during the 4 million preceding years.

At the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994, 179 countries agreed to raise funding for reproductive health in developing countries, including family planning, to US$17 billion annually by the year 2000. One-third of that money was to come from developed countries.

Few countries are meeting their Cairo commitments—with dire consequences likely. The Population Reports authors cite UN figures predicting that failure to meet the year 2000 goal will lead to an estimated additional 42 million unintended pregnancies, 17 million induced abortions, and 90,000 maternal deaths each year. Earlier this year, at a UN 5-year review of ICPD, representatives called on donor countries to "reverse the current decline" in development assistance for reproductive health care.

The growing number of couples in need of family planning makes more support for programs crucial. Currently, more than half of all couples of reproductive age use family planning. By 2020 the number of couples in the reproductive age group will double to 1.6 billion. Therefore, twice the services will be required even if the percentage of people who want family planning remains the same as today.

But in reality, an even greater percentage of the population will want family planning services. Demand for family planning keeps rising as couples want to have fewer children. Fertility rates will fall and population growth will slow further only if that increased demand can be met, the report states.

In many developing countries advocacy for family planning is becoming increasingly important as demand for services grows and international support slows. For many health care professionals, says the Hopkins report, "advocacy is a new and challenging responsibility. Advocates must attract and hold the attention of key audiences with powerful arguments and persuasive communication."

Written for family planning professionals and their supporters in developing countries, the Hopkins report provides key research-based evidence on how family planning and reproductive health services help people and how services address social and developmental problems.

The Hopkins report cites a wide variety of studies showing that family planning and other reproductive health programs:

• Save women's lives—Family planning could save an additional 150,000 women's lives each year, avoiding one-fourth of maternal deaths. Particularly, using contraceptives prevents unintended pregnancies, which often result in unsafe abortions, which cause nearly 80,000 deaths each year.
• Save children's lives—Spacing pregnancies at least two years apart increases a child's chances of survival by over 50% compared with those of children conceived less than two years after the previous birth. In developing countries there are 65 infant deaths per 1,000 live births compared with 6 per 1,000 in developed countries.
• Offer women more choices—Each year 14 million children are born to women ages 15-19. In many countries later marriage, lower fertility, and more education of women have increased women's participation in the labor force and given them more control over their lives.
• Encourage safer sexual behavior—Every day 16,000—almost 6 million a year—people are infected with HIV/AIDS. Sometime in 2000 the total number of infections is expected to reach 40 million, 90% in developing countries. With more support, family planning providers could help reduce the AIDS epidemic by distributing condoms and promoting safe sexual behavior.
• Encourage youth to be sexually responsible—There are about one billion people between the ages of 10 and 19. With more counseling and services, many young people would avoid unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.
• Help slow population growth, protecting the environment and preserving natural resources—More use of contraception lowers fertility rates and slows population growth. In turn, slowing population is one important way to help relieve the underlying pressure on resources such as water and arable land, which can lead to conflict and civil strife.
• Create a "demographic bonus" to help development as population growth slows—This bonus consists of more working people compared with the number of young dependents, which boosts productivity, savings, and investment. As productivity rises, increases in per capita output can be invested in education, health care, job creation, and other social and economic improvements.

Why Family Planning Matters was prepared by Ushma D. Upadhyay, M.P.H., and Bryant Robey, M.A. Population Reports is an international review journal of important issues in population, family planning, and related health matters. It is published four times a year in four languages by the Population Information Program at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP) for more than 170,000 family planning and other health professionals worldwide, with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID administers the US foreign assistance program, providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 80 countries worldwide.

For more information contact: Stephen Goldstein at Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA. Tel: 410 659-6300; Fax: 410 659-6266; E-mail: PopRepts@jhuccp.org. Full text of Why Family Planning Matters.

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