The developed world is
failing to invest in sexual and reproductive health care because
it has greatly underestimated the benefits — socially and
economically — that such investment would bring, a United
Nations sponsored report found.
"Adding it Up: The
Benefits of Sexual and Reproductive Health Care," a joint report
by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the UN Population Fund,
calls on developed countries to live up to multi million dollar
funding pledges they made at a Cairo conference 10 years ago.
Developing countries
provided US$2.6 billion in 2000 for sexual and reproductive
health services — less than half of what they had pledged
for that year.
"Governments are
not recognizing the importance to long term development goals
from investment in this area," Sharon Camp, the president of
the Alan Guttmacher Institute, said ahead of the report's launch
in London.
"We have seen greater
awareness of the need to address the AIDS epidemic but that's
only on piece of the picture," she added.
Camp said that improving
sexual and reproductive health services was vital for the achievement
of the U.N.'s 2002 Millennium Development Goals that aim to
reduce poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation
and discrimination against women.
The report said
that current estimates of the benefits of improving sexual health
tend to focus too narrowly on the medical benefits of intervention.
"What has been less
well recognized is the impact this has on the women's ability
to finish school, to get training that might allow them to enter
the labor force and what it has on productivity," she said.
For example, unwanted
pregnancies are often not included in estimates of the costs
of a lack of sexual health care because they are not considered
an illness.
The report said
that poor sexual and reproductive health, particularly among
women, accounts for a large share of the global burden of disease.
It highlighted a
severe shortage of contraceptive services and supplies and said
that providing access to such medication and support for woman
at risk would cost an extra US$3.9 billion each year. That
would save the lives of an additional 1.5 million women and
children annually, reduce induced abortions by 64 percent, reduce
illness-related to pregnancy and preserve 27 million years of
healthy life, the report estimated.
"The figure that
knocks me away every time is that for women of child bearing
age, premature death, illness and sexual disability — one-third
of those diseases are related to sexual and reproductive health,"
said Camp.
"When you consider
that women of reproductive age represent one quarter of the
world's population, we are talking about something that has
a major impact on morbidity and mortality," she added.
___
On the Web:
The Alan Guttmacher
Institute: http://www.guttmacher.org
UNFPA: http://www.unfpa.org
Reference
Source 102
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