World Population Day 2008: Planning for the Future

July 10, 2008—“If the world is going to reach its goal of reducing maternal mortality, family planning is absolutely critical,” said Representative Betty McCollum (pictured right with fellow panelist Marilyn Peri) at the Plan Your Future: Plan Your Family briefing held today on Capitol Hill.

Her remarks were made on the eve of World Population Day, July 11. This year’s theme emphasizes the importance of increasing access to family planning to promote the health and well-being of families worldwide. Research shows that family planning saves lives by allowing mothers to space their children to healthier intervals, improving the lives of women and their children. It also protects against HIV infection.

Yet, there is an enormous unmet need for these services.

“An estimated 200 million women in developing countries worldwide want to delay pregnancy but are not using modern contraception,” Representative McCollum said. “[It] remains way out of reach for women and their families in developing countries.”

The need will continue to grow, because there are currently one billion young people entering their reproductive years around the world.

Congressman Carnahan, a longtime proponent of family planning, spoke about importance of increasing funding for these programs.

Representative McCollum was joined at the July 10 briefing by Representative Russ Carnahan to highlight the need for increased U.S. investments in international family planning. The U.S. has long been a leader in funding international family planning worldwide, but U.S. funding has decreased almost 40 percent in the last decade for these programs.

Other speakers at the briefing included Todd Preston of Population Action International (PAI), former USAID Office of Population Director Margaret Neuse, and two participants in CEDPA’s current Global Women in Management workshop: Asih Puji Rahayu of Yayasan Balita Sehat (Foundation for Mother and Child Health) in Jakarta, Indonesia; and Marilyn Peri of Community Based Health Care in Hela (Tari), Papua New Guinea.

Asih and Marilyn are spending one-month in Washington, D.C. for the CEDPA workshop to strengthen their program and financial management abilities as well as communication, fundraising and leadership skills. They are joined by 24 other women from 16 countries including Angola, Colombia, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates. CEDPA’s Global Women in Management workshop, now in its 30th year, is sponsored by the ExxonMobil Foundation’s Educating Women and Girls’ Initiative.

During their remarks before the U.S. Congress, Asih Puji Rahayu and Marilyn Peri spoke about the tremendous need to increase funding and resources for family planning and other maternal and child health programs within their countries.

Asih Puji Rahayu explained how women in her community were requesting information on family planning.

“We added family planning [to our health services] because we saw a real need for these services among the families we serve,” said Asih. “We were faced with many examples where mothers who we worked with would ask us how they could limit their childbearing so they could take care of their existing children and continue also to contribute to the family income.”

Both Asih and Marilyn reach out to fathers and religious leaders in their family health programs in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

“We have had many men at the beginning of the training who said they would never allow their wives to use contraceptives,” Marilyn said of her work in the rural highlands of Papua New Guinea. “They said it would cause their wives to be unfaithful…But after learning about the effects of repeated child bearing on their wives’ health—and how it might affect their lives and that of their children if she died of poor health—we found that many men sympathize and support their wives getting family planning services.”

“Our experience shows that improving family health is best achieved when you focus on the entire family—we provide basic services to children, educate and empower their mothers, and involve men,” Asih said.

Asih’s organization also reaches out to Muslim leaders in the urban Jakarta neighborhoods where she works. “We invited a male Muslim doctor who was also a reproductive health expert to talk with the husbands about…basic health information and the effects of having many children on women’s bodies, and also emphasized how Islam supported family health,” she said.

Co-sponsors for today’s briefing included CEDPA, Population Action International, the United Nations Foundation, the Communication Consortium Media Center, Americans for UNFPA, American Jewish World Service, the National Audubon Society, the Global Health Council, the Izaak Walton League, the National Council of Jewish Women, Pathfinder International, the Population Connection and the Sierra Club.

These groups also have joined together to support a $1billion request in spending for international family planning in the FY2009 U.S. federal budget.

CEDPA has worked for over 30 years expanding community-level access to family planning information to ensure informed reproductive health decision making by women and their families. Learn more about CEDPA’s work in family planning and reproductive health.

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