A MALE contraceptive jab tested by scientists has proved to be as good as the Pill in preventing pregnancies.

The injection, which temporarily halts sperm production, was found to be ‘highly effective’ during trials.

It is hoped the research could pave the way for both men and women to share equal responsibility for contraception.

However, findings from previous surveys have repeatedly suggested one stumbling block will be whether women would sufficiently trust men to make reliable use of hormonal contraception.

For full article, visit:
http://www.religiousconsultation.org/NEWS/contraceptive_jab_for_men.htm

Opposition to contraception is hurting the Philippines. Each year, more than half of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the country are unplanned, resulting in high costs to women, their families and the national health care system. In addition, this very high rate of unintended pregnancy is impeding the Philippine’s development goals.

Yet this is not an epidemic for which there is no known solution. Unintended pregnancies are highly preventable if women have access to voluntary family planning information and services, particularly modern methods of contraception.

For full article, visit:
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/views-and-analysis

Ask 46-year-old Erlinda Cristobal (real name concealed by request) how many children she has.
“Ten,” she said.

“But I was supposed to have only six,” she snapped in a breath.

After the sixth pregnancy, Cristobal decided that she and her husband, a casual laborer who earns an average of four dollars a day, should not have any more children.

“My husband doesn’t have a stable job. There are days when we don’t eat so that our children can,” she told Xinhua in an interview near her residence in Manila.

For full article, visit:
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=461829&publicationSubCategoryId=200

The Population Institute’s Global Media Awards are devoted to drawing attention to global population issues. The award honors those who have contributed to creating an awareness of population problems through their journalistic endeavors in a meritorious manner.
Continue Reading »

From Development Gateway. Download the full report at http://population.developmentgateway.org/index.php?id=10976&tx_dgcontent_pi1%5btt_news%5d=496296&cHash=96a6085238&MP=10976-8975

Elements of Success in Family Planning Programming
Prepared by Catherine Richey and Ruwaida Salem, this issue of Population Reports offers an overview of the core factors contributing to the success of family planning programs. Family planning professionals around the world helped to identify these 10 crucial program elements. The report highlights program experiences, best practices, and evidence-based guidance derived from nearly six decades of experience in international family planning.

The overarching strategy of family planning programs is to offer clients easy access to a wide range of affordable contraceptive methods through multiple service delivery channels in a good-quality, reliable fashion. What do program managers do to work toward success?
Continue Reading »

From Development Gateway. Download the full report at http://africahealth2010.aed.org/PDF/RFP_English.pdf

Repositioning Family Planning: Guidelines for Advocacy Action
‘Provision of family planning services in Africa is hindered by poverty, poor access to services and commodities, poor coordination of the programmes, and dwindling donor funding. In addition, traditional beliefs favoring high fertility, religious barriers, and lack of make involvement have weakened family planning interventions. Yet, it is considered an essential component of primary health care and reproductive health and plays a major role in reducing maternal and newborn morbidity, and transmission of HIV.’

In case you missed my January 12 distribution of this paper, below is a review of a World Bank report, as a follow up to the articles I have distributed this week regarding the World Bank. The review was written by Steven Sinding. You can download the report, “Population Issues in the 21st Century: the Role of the World Bank” at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/HEALTHNUTRITIONANDPOPULATION/Resources/281627-1095698140167/PopulationDiscussionPaperApril07Final.pdf

Bringing Back the Population Factor at the World Bank (PDF, 37 KB)

PMC was recently featured in Earth Island Journal
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/sex_sells/

Sex Sells: A Tiny Nonprofit Uses Mass Media to Encourage Family Planning

Fikrite is a girl in trouble. Her grandfather has just died and now a neighbor, a man named Damte, has taken over the house and is trying to turn the place into a bar and brothel. Fikrite says she won’t allow it, so Damte starts spreading rumors about the girl and soon everyone, including her boyfriend, thinks that she is hiding a child born out of wedlock. Damte then seduces Fikrite’s stepsister, Lamrot, gets her hooked on booze and drugs, and knocks her up. When Lamrot tries to abort the pregnancy, she almost bleeds to death and lands in the hospital, where she finds out that she is HIV-positive.

If this sounds like overcooked melodrama – well, that’s the point. The story comes from “Yeken Kignit” (“Looking Over One’s Life”), a radio soap opera that gripped much of Ethiopia for 257 episodes beginning in 2002. The show had all of the elements that make serial dramas popular: sex, romance, mischief, betrayal, suspense. But the wildly successful program – which reached more than one half of Ethiopian adults during its two-year run and sparked a craze for naming baby girls Fikrite – wasn’t designed just for entertainment. Produced by a small US organization called the Population Media Center (PMC), the show was written with the express purpose of encouraging family planning, women’s empowerment, and HIV/AIDS awareness. Not all the listeners knew this, however, and that was also the point.
Continue Reading »

The cost benefit analysis (shown in the PDF below) of family planning in Kenya by USAID could be done for most countries of the world. It shows the savings in meeting the Millennium Development Goals that can be achieved by family planning. The paper does not spell out what is required to meet the “unmet need” for family planning, but as I summarize below (in a commentary I was invited to give on the BBC program, One Planet), information is needed along with family planning services in order to achieve this goal. An edited version of my commentary can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/science/2009/03/000000_one_planet.shtml in the 28 May podcast (starting at 16:55 minutes).

Kenya Family Planning Cost Benefit Analysis (PDF, 534 KB)

How to solve the population problem

The world’s population is now growing by 82 million people a year, which is the equivalent of adding the population of a new Egypt every year. This growth is not sustainable economically or ecologically.
This is a problem that needs urgent attention, both for environmental reasons and to lift people out of poverty. Since World War II, no country has gone from developing status to developed status without first reducing its population growth rate.
Continue Reading »

The document below is from International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health Volume 35, Number 1, March 2009. See http://www.guttmacher.org/journals/toc/ipsrh3501toc.html

Response to Critics of Family Planning Programs (PDF, 173 KB)