Access to Reproductive Health Supplies is Crucial to Achieving Millennium Development Goals

Washington, DC - July 18, 2006

Ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information, services and supplies is essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to a recent report released by the Millennium Project. The report makes five specific recommendations on integrating SRH into the MDGs, including funding for reproductive health supplies and the systems that ensure accurate and timely distribution. PAI strongly endorses these recommendations, specifically the need to improve access to contraceptives and condoms to meet the growing global demand. Without access to supplies, a sustainable reproductive health program is unattainable.

Providing adequate funding for reproductive health supplies—including contraceptives and condoms—and streamlining delivery mechanisms will help ensure that supplies are delivered to the people who need them most. The Millennium Project highlights the work of the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC), in which PAI is a partner. The RHSC is working to improve communication and coordination between donors to manage existing reproductive health supplies more efficiently and find ways to finance and deliver the 15.3 billion condoms the UNFPA recently estimated will be needed by 2015 to meet annual demand. By ensuring the availability of these important supplies, we provide women and men with greater control over their fertility—which dramatically improves maternal and child health—and their ability to prevent HIV infection, all vital to achieving the MDGs.

If the global need for contraceptives were met, up to 1.5 million deaths could be averted each year. Only by saving these lives can countries begin to tackle the MDGs. PAI urges donor countries to heed the advice of the Millennium Project and prioritize access to SRH information and services as a vital part of their plans to achieve the MDGs.

Population Action International (PAI) works to improve individual well-being and preserve global resources by mobilizing political and financial support for population, family planning and reproductive health policies and programs.