Reproductive Health-the Missing Millennium Development Goal

While women in developing countries continue to die in large numbers in child birth, Population and Reproductive Health specialists and advocates around the world are struggling to keep the policy agenda focused on the rights and needs of poor women. The 1994 Cairo Conference and Program of Action changed how we do business, and opened many doors, but the agenda is not complete and has stalled in a number of ways. At the country level, governments and donors are making difficult choices about how and where to allocate scarce human and financial resources. Funding approaches have moved away from the implementation of narrowly directed health programs to a broader approach of health system development and reform. At the same time, countries are also centering their development agenda on the broad goal of poverty reduction. This volume addresses a large knowledge and capacity gap in the Reproductive Health community and provides tools for key actors to empower faster positive change. It is a synopsis of the materials developed for WBI's learning program on Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Poverty Reduction, Reproductive Health and Health Sector Reform. The volume brings together knowledge about epidemiology, demography, economics, and trends in global financial assistance. The volume also introduces practical tools such as benefit incidence analysis, costing, and stakeholder analysis to strengthen the evidence base for policy and to address the political economy factors for reform.

"World Leaders, gathered at the United Nations in September 2005 at the World Summit, have committed themselves to achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015. Our experience at UNFPA shows that national and international financing is key. It is absolutely vital that countries create a budget line for reproductive health in general, and reproductive health commodities in particular, so that these services are fully funded to reach all those women who have unmet reproductive health needs. This book is one sure contribution to saving women's lives and ensuring the acheivement of their human rights." -Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, Under-Secretary-General, United Nations. "Based on years of the authors' personal experience in teaching the new concepts to scores of national decision-makers in the field of sexual and reproductive health, this book brings together a wealth of information on the subject that currently has no match. I strongly recommend this book as a teaching and reference resource to all concerned national and international policy makers." -Paul F. A. Van Look, M.D., Ph.D., FRCOG, Director, Department of Reproductive Health and Research World Health Organization. "I found this book very useful toward understanding the role of reproductive health in national development for our countries. It fills an important knowledge gap for reproductive health advocates. In an era of Millennium Development Goals, it is legitimate to question whether we can achieve the objectives of reducing poverty without putting reproductive health squarely in the development agenda. And this book gives ample reasons why we can not." -Sahlu Haile, Senior Program Advisor, Population, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. "One of the most important and useful publications to emerge since the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), this volume is an invaluable guide for sexual reproductive health (SRH) program designers and managers on how to incorporate SRH programs into the new architecture of international development cooperation: country ownership, sector support approaches, aid harmonization, and the overarching goal of poverty reduction." -Steven W. Sinding, Director-General, International Planned Parenthood Federation