After the Bush administration withheld $US34M in funding to UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) in 2003, the UN organisation sought "34 million friends" who could donate one or more dollars.

© Reporters

The programme benefited 22 ACP* countries between January 2003 and October 2008. It was launched by the EC to relieve the dramatic impact on poor countries in the wake of the former administration of United States President George Bush to cut off the US contribution to international family planning programmes. In 2002, the UNFPA estimated that if US financing had continued, it would have made it possible to avoid 2 million unwanted pregnancies, meaning 800,000 fewer abortions, as well as more than 77,000 deaths of infants and children. 

The joint EC/ACP/IPPF/UNFPA programme has enabled over 1.6 million people to benefit from sexual and reproductive health services and has trained thousands of professionals, while at the same time helping ACP governments to draw up and implement policies in the sector.
 
In Rwanda, for example, more than 150,000 people attended awareness sessions on HIV/AIDS prevention and family planning. Almost 10,000 young Rwandans underwent voluntary testing for HIV, while 1,500 people who tested HIV-positive were assisted by health insurance funds in gaining access to treatment. About 100 peer educators were trained and almost 40,000 people benefited from family planning and reduced risk maternity services. The IPPF representative in Rwanda also drew attention to Kigali’s adoption of a law punishing rapists with 25 years in prison, or even life imprisonment for transmitting fatal diseases. 

There is no avoiding the fact, however, that the international community is still a long way from meeting Goal five of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that aims to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015. Currently falling at the rate of scarcely one per cent a year, of all the MDGs, this is without doubt the one that has seen the least progress. 

Conference participants therefore stressed the urgent need to strengthen the capacity of healthcare professionals in ACP countries and to encourage governments to make reproductive health a priority in their strategic documents to reduce poverty. In future, it is important for health ministers to have an input in such documents. And despite the financial crisis, donors must pledge to step up universal access to reproductive health and achieve the 2010 milestone of 35 million more births attended by trained medical staff each year. The EU is to invest €86M up to 2015 with a special focus on involving civil society in ACP countries and helping the most vulnerable and underserved young people, among whom unwanted pregnancies are most prevalent.
 
President Obama’s decision to resume US contributions to the UNFPA and the IPPF, confirmed by the US representative to the conference, was welcomed with relief by the event participants.

* Financing: €32M. Countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Jamaica, Niger, Rwanda, Suriname, Tanzania, Congo, Dominican Republic, Gambia, Haiti, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tuvalu, Zambia.

• Applying good intentions

• Married men committed to wives’ health

• Need for social movements capable of impacting policy

• Striving to apply the law against Female Genital Mutilation

• Stepping up the fight against maternal mortality

• Harnessing the role of African women in the Diaspora

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