Meeting Shut Down After Planned Parenthood Chief Challenged on Giving Risky Drugs to African Women

By Lisa Correnti | October 9, 2014

NEW YORK, October 10 (C-Fam) A UN event abruptly ended when a women’s rights attorney asked International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Director General why harmful contraceptives were targeted to poor women in Africa.

“In countries where HIV is a significant problem, where we don’t have access to good healthcare, why would we be using the most dangerous contraceptives,” asked Kwame Fosu. Eleven studies, including one by Gates Foundation researcher Dr. Renee Heffron, concluded that users of the injectable Depo Provera have a significant risk of transmitting and acquiring HIV/AIDS, added Fosu.

Tewodros Melesse avoided answering. Instead, IPPF’s chief gave a general statement supporting Depo Provera. He failed to explain why African women are targeted with dangerous progesterone contraceptives rarely used by Caucasian women.

Co-sponsors IPPF, Denmark and Liberia organized the meeting to attract high-level ministers in New York for the UN’s General Assembly to garner additional support for family planning in the post-2015 development agenda.

Despite 30 minutes remaining and an earlier announcement of a second round of questions by the moderator, IPPF President Naomi Seboni abruptly ended the session,

African delegates immediately approached Fosu for information. An IPPF handler tried to pull diplomats away when Fosu began briefing them.

IPPF is a direct beneficiary of family planning programs directed at poor women in sub-Sahara Africa and Southeast Asia countries. Hundreds of millions of dollars flows to the group, which distributes long acting contraceptives (LACs) such as the injectable Depo Provera and the implant Jadelle or Norplant. Norplant was removed from US markets in 2002 because of health risks.

Funding for contraceptives swelled some 48% since 2006, receiving a significant boost when the Gates Foundation joined a long list of philanthropists supporting population reduction programs, such as the Rockefeller, Packard and Hewlett foundations. At the London Family Planning Summit in 2012, Melinda Gates doubled their annual spending for contraceptives to $1 billion and announced a partnership with Pfizer Pharmaceutical – the manufacturer of Depo Provera. This despite a Guttmacher report showing only 8% of African women had an unmet need for contraception.

With reports that half of African women and girls are using injectables, Fosu was not surprised when one diplomat reported that her sister was unable to conceive after using Depo Provera .

Side effects include a doubling of breast cancer, excessive bleeding, a delay in fertility return and sterility. Long-term use has been associated with loss of bone density, so serious that the FDA issued a Black Box warning, the sternest warning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can give.

Fosu charges that African women are not given this information prior to receiving the injection and African health ministers are unaware of the serious side effects. An IPPF employee in Africa recently told Fosu he had no knowledge of the FDA warning.

Like IPPF, groups such as Population Council, Pathfinder and FHI 360, all receiving millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars, collaborate in distributing Depo. A recent scholarly book on reproductive health offers a glimpse on how FHI360 successfully gained health ministers’ approval for community health workers to distribute injectable contraceptives.

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