At the Millennium Summit in 2000, 189 United Nations Member States agreed to help the world's poorest countries significantly by the year 2015. A framework for progress was developed, consisting of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and related targets and indicators. Progress on improving reproductive health is critical to the achievement of the MDG targets.
Secure access to reproductive health supplies has a direct impact on the Millennium Development Goals, in particular:
MDG Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Having fewer, healthier children can reduce the economic burden on poor families and allow them to invest more in each child’s care and schooling, helping to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Since the 1960s, fertility in developing countries has decreased from an average of six births per woman to three. Most of the steep decreases were in countries with comprehensive family planning programmes.
MDG Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Eliminating gender disparity in secondary education is the key target of this goal. Delaying pregnancy until after their education is complete is crucial to achieving this target.
MDG Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Almost 11 million children under the age of 5 die each year, mainly in developing countries. The use of modern methods of family planning is critical to successful birth spacing and increased infant survival. Infant mortality rates can decrease by as much as 45 per cent when births are spaced more than 2 years apart. Moreover, the survival of mothers (MDG 5) has a huge impact on child survival.
MDG Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Target 5A: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
In industrialized countries a woman has a low risk of dying in pregnancy or childbirth over the course of her lifetime – only one in 17,400 in Sweden, for instance. However, in Afghanistan, this risk rises to one in 8. If contraception were provided to the women who lack access, maternal mortality would decline by at least one third.2
Target 5B: Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health: Universal access to reproductive health includes: expanding the contraceptive prevalence rate, or the percentage of women between the ages of 15-49 years who are using any form of contraception; reducing the adolescent birth rate; providing antenatal care for pregnant women; and reducing the unmet need for family planning. Achieving this target demands secure access to both contraceptives and maternal health drugs and equipment.
MDG Target 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases
Actions to prevent HIV are 28 times more cost effective than treatment. Condoms - male and female- are currently the most efficient, widely available technologies to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. They are also the only methods to simultaneously protect against unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.
