Africa: Why Family Planning Is Central to Development

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Billboards in Ethiopia's capital announce the 2013 International Conference on Family Planning from November 12-15, under the theme "Full Access, Full Choice". The conference participants from around the world should draw lessons from Ethiopia's own experience that family planning is central to broader women's health and development, contributing to the empowerment of women and girls and more stable and prosperous families. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's video message to the conference offers a unique opportunity for the United States to strategically reposition family planning as key to sustainable development, and to re-double U.S. commitment to national family planning programs.

We saw first-hand some of the remarkable health and development progress attributed to increased access to family planning information and services around Ethiopia. According to the 2011 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), the contraceptive prevalence rate in Ethiopia has almost doubled since 2005, from 15 percent to 29 percent. The government's health extension program (HEP), comprising 38,000 predominantly young women health extension workers (HEWs), is unparalleled in Africa; the HEP has contributed directly to rising awareness about the importance of delaying first births, birth spacing, and the availability of modern contraceptive methods. Another impressive result of the HEP has been the sharp reduction of under-five child mortality, which has enabled Ethiopia to meet Millennium Development Goal 4.

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