MDG Report Begs for Contraception $$

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | October 11, 2010

The UN Population Fund just released the latest progress report on the Millennium Development Goals. The fund dedicates six and a half pages to what it claims is a new target under the maternal health goal, “achieving universal access to reproductive health.” Half of those are used to make the case for more international financing for contraception. (By contrast the other target, to “reduce the maternal mortality ratio by two thirds,” garnered only two pages).

The report’s evidence on family planning is misleading.

On page 38, it shows a chart indicating that family planning funding has decreased sharply as a proportion of overall health financing between 2000 and 2008. The report says this is evidence that nations are failing to meet their commitments to improving women’s reproductive health. This is wrong for two main reasons.

First, the report fails to point out that the rise in health funding has a lot to do with US-led efforts to eradicate TB, malaria and HIV/AIDS, instigated by the Bush administration. The family planning industry has viewed these funds with a green eye, but the fact is that their funding, too, has increased and not decreased as the report would have policy makers believe.

Second and more importantly, UN member states never debated and approved a target for reproductive health. They rejected it twice, in 2000 and 2005. That it was slipped into the appendix of a UN report that the GA approved certainly does not give evidence of any “commitment” on the part of member states, not in any the legal, political, or moral sense.

Finally, there is no evidence that increasing family planning improves maternal health. The UN has not given any valid, substantiated evidence to show the link, and independent researchers have similarly said it is a difficult connection to prove.

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