The challenge of the 1990s
Potts, M.
Ippf Medical Bulletin 25(1): 1-3
1991
ISSN/ISBN: 0019-0357 PMID: 12283854 Document Number: 369424
The most pressing challenges in reproductive health and family planning in the 1990s are enumerated: doubling of contraceptive users, improving consistent use of pills and IUDs, providing condoms for AIDS prevention, allocating funds, expanding social marketing, sterilizing those in need, quality assurance and finally, dealing with demand for abortion if contraceptive needs are not met. New contraceptive users will be found in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who currently have no access, as well as a 33% increase in numbers of young couples. Much can be done with packaging and counseling to improve on the 5-20% failure rates of pill users in developing countries. Similarly, improvement in IUD technology in China and elsewhere will save on costs of failures and removals. Funds provided by donors for contraceptive supplies alone will almost double, despite social marketing, because of the higher numbers of users. A much higher proportion of the program costs will be direct expenditures on supplies. New rapid and less invasive methods of sterilization will be needed to meet the needs of vast numbers of couples desiring to limit births, especially in the Soviet bloc nations. If these challenges are met, millions of mothers and infant lives will be saved, yet the world population will stabilize at closer to 10 rather than 15 billion by the end of the next century.