Family planning helps people in Africa
to be healthier and wealthier, as women without contraceptives become
locked in “a cycle of poverty,” Melinda Gates told AFP as a conference
on the topic was held in Ivory Coast.
“When a woman has access to
contraceptives she can lift herself out of poverty, and if she doesn’t
have access to contraceptives, it locks her inside a cycle of poverty
for the rest of her life,” said the wife of Microsoft co-founder and
billionaire Bill Gates, whose foundation is very active in the field.
Family planning has “huge health
benefits for the woman and for her children, and it has economic
benefits,” Gates told AFP by telephone from the Ivorian economic capital
Abidjan during the fifth annual meeting of a West African partnership
on the topic.
Experts from nine countries met in
Abidjan with technical and financial backers in the Ouagadougou
Partnership, which aims to bring family planning to 2.2 million more
people across the region by 2020.
“If (a woman) has less children and can
space them, she is less likely to die. Her children grow up healthier
and the family is wealthier,” said Melinda Gates.
– ‘Demographic dividend’ –
“Family planning is absolutely part and
parcel of economic development, just like agriculture and education,”
she added, stressing that “it’s imperative that it’s voluntary.
“The woman has to be educated about it
and decide if she wants to use it. There are examples all over the
world. If you coerce people, that is not a thing to do… China has backed
away from its policy.
“One thing you see more and more African
countries talk about is the ‘demographic dividend’. They know they want
to bring down their maternal mortality rate, they know it will help
lift people out of poverty and ultimately increase their GDP (gross
domestic product).”
The Ouagadougou Partnership acknowledges
that the goal of 2.2 million women in five years “may seem low”, but
argues on its website that the target is “in reality very ambitious” in
light of limited funds, socio-cultural barriers, a low contraceptive
prevalence rate and “timid political commitment.”
Gates is more upbeat, since an initial
target of one million women has already been exceeded. In her eyes,
ongoing success depends on educating “the power structures — husband and
faith leaders — around the women, and then you talk to the women.”
“I’ve been to dusty villages in remote
places in Niger and talked to women who know about family planning and
are using it. I said, ‘I’m skeptical. How is the word going to get out?’
“‘We’re getting the word out,'” women
replied. “‘We meet. We meet at the well, when we grind millet, when a
new baby is born. We know we’re not getting enough water, it’s not
raining as much, we’re not getting much off our farms. We want to have
less children … and we’re educating our sisters’.”
– ‘Life-and-death emergency’ –
Religious leaders in Muslim communities
have accepted that “family planning is allowed even in the Koran,” said
the co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“When you meet with faith leaders, they
will tell you they know a mother, a sister, a wife that died in
childbirth. They know it’s better for women to use contraceptives, so
you have to start there.”
In Niger, one of the world’s poorest
countries with the highest global birthrate at 7.6 babies per woman,
schools for husbands have started and men have begun to understand that
the best option for their children to survive into adulthood is to have
fewer of them, rather than more.
“When family sizes come down… and
they’re only feeding two children so they’ve got more income on what
comes out of their farm,” Gates said.
Such families set a compelling example,
but medical follow-up is vital. Gates met a woman in Niger with a tiny
plot of land and six children to raise while her husband was off looking
for work.
“I can’t have more children. Can’t you
see that this is a life-and-death emergency for me?” Gates quoted the
woman as saying, but no contraceptives were available.
“The governments have to fix the supply chain and make sure women have access,” she said.
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