Family Planning 2020 Makes Measurable Progress in First Two Years
By Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Health Team
In just two years since the July 2012 London Summit on Family Planning – where a global collaboration of governments, non-profit organizations, donors and researchers gathered to bring much-needed attention and resources to family planning programs – significant progress has been made in expanding access to modern contraceptives for women and girls in the world’s poorest countries.
The Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) second annual progress report released on November 3rd indicates that an additional 8.4 million women and girls used modern contraception in 2013 compared to 2012. FP2020 aims to expand contraceptive access to an additional 120 million women and girls across 69 countries in the developing world by 2020.
Among the other measurable benefits documented in 2013:
- Five more countries made commitments to FP2020 – Benin, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Mauritania and Myanmar – bringing the total number of commitment countries to 29
- Donor governments disbursed $1.3 billion in bilateral funding for family planning programs—representing nearly a 20 percent increase since 2012
- Across the 69 focus countries, FP2020 estimates that the use of modern contraception by a total of 274 million women and girls averted 77 million unintended pregnancies, which is two million more unintended pregnancies averted than in 2012
- 24 million unsafe abortions were averted (compared to 23 million in 2012) and 125,000 maternal deaths averted (compared to 120,000 in 2012)
In March 2014, Bloomberg Philanthropies fulfilled its $50 million pledge to FP2020. This included an expansion of its Maternal Health Program in Tanzania which has one of the highest numbers of maternal deaths in the world. The new FP2020 commitment will integrate family planning with other health services already offered at 10 project-supported health centers.
In addition, Bloomberg Philanthropies is making investments in four more FP2020 countries – Burkina Faso, Nicaragua, Senegal, and Uganda—to help local organizations improve access to reproductive health services. Bloomberg Philanthropies funds also helped launch a Rapid Response Mechanism in partnership with FP2020 and the United Nations Foundation. The mechanism will provide quick funding to fill urgent gaps and unforeseen opportunities in any of the 69 FP2020 focus countries.
As our founder Mike Bloomberg notes in the Partnership in Progress report, “For all of our advances in medicine, far too many women still die during childbirth, a tragedy for mothers, their children, and their entire families. By providing critical health services closer to mothers’ homes – and by empowering women to make informed choices about when they want to have children – we can help save thousands of lives.”
The full report can be found within this website www.familyplanning2020.org/progress