World Population Day 2003: Spotlight on Adolescent Reproductive Health Care – PAI Challenges World Leaders to do More for Young People

July 10, 2003

Washington, DC — Population Action International (PAI) is urging President Bush, visiting Africa this week, and other world leaders to mark World Population Day (July 11, 2003) by helping this generation of young people gain access to reproductive health care.

"Half the world’s population is under the age of 25. Half of all new HIV infections occur to young people. Yet the world, and particularly the developing world, is largely unprepared to meet young people’s reproductive health needs," says Amy Coen, President of PAI.

"Now is the ideal time, and Africa, an ideal location, for Mr. Bush to take a giant humanitarian leap in the right direction. Surely it’s time for the President to promote better access to life-saving and life-improving family planning, and a comprehensive, open and realistic approach to fighting HIV/AIDS that doesn’t overemphasize abstinence at the expense of condoms and condom education — an approach that is working well in places like Uganda," Coen adds.

Under the Bush Administration, the United States has withheld its $34 million appropriated by Congress to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), reinstated the Global Gag Rule and is preparing to experiment with untried and untested abstinence-only programs to curb HIV/AIDS.

PAI’s recent reports In This Generation: Sexual Reproductive Health Care for a Youthful World and Condoms Saharan Africa have access to Count: Meeting the Need in the Era of HIV/AIDS reveal some of the challenges and contradictions of meeting the reproductive health needs of the earth’s largest-ever population of young people.

• In This Generation finds that Iran is providing more consistent sexual and reproductive health education for young people than the United States.
• Condoms Count shows that donor countries are falling well short on providing the condoms and condom education necessary to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS, despite the disproportionate impact on young people. For example, men in sub-fewer than five condoms per year.

"On his historic trip to Africa, President Bush can see first hand that from Nigeria to South Africa, when people — particularly women and girls — have access to reproductive health care, economic opportunities and education, millions of lives are saved and improved. It’s a great, but largely untold, success story. Every effort by every government, especially the one in Washington, is needed to expand this success story to all the young people of the world," says Coen.