Family Planning Key to Maternal and Child Health

OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Harper has promised to champion maternal and child health at the upcoming G8 summit in June in Huntsville.  However, along with that promise was an absolute refusal to include family planning as an important factor in women and children’s health in developing countries.  Now Mr. Harper has changed his mind – but what assurances do Canadians have that he won’t change it back.

So far, the Prime Minister has limited his attention to vaccinations, clean water and nutrition.  While these are important, access to contraception has a vital role to play.  “1.5 million deaths per year can be attributed to lack of access to contraception,” said Dr. Georgina Wilcock, Green Critic for Health Care.  “Once again the Harper government is ignoring the science.”

Recent research by the Guttmacher Institute and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) shows 70% of maternal deaths and half of newborn deaths in developing countries could be prevented with a doubling in investment in family planning and maternal and newborn health care ((http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/addingitup.pdf). Commitments to improve family planning were agreed to at last year’s G8 summit in Italy.

“Women need to be able to delay pregnancy, space out their births, and limit their family size.  We have these options in developed nations and we now need to work together globally to extend the same options to developing nations, where they are urgently needed,” said Wilcock.

Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD) reports that 215 million women who would like to delay or avoid childbearing do not have access to modern contraception.

“With the growing environmental crisis, the impacts of which will be particularly severe in poorer nations, family planning is even more important in terms of stabilizing global population,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May.

Failure to stabilize and reduce human population within a reasonable time will result in the inevitable reduction of human population by means of high death rates as the Earth’s human carrying capacity is not only exceeded but reduced by the consumption of resources and the destruction of biological capital, resulting in poverty, starvation, disease, great human suffering and possibly social disruption.

“First our government says they will in no way work on improving access to contraception, now they say they will. Such mixed messages are detrimental to moving forward at the upcoming G8 meeting,” said May. “We certainly hope they will pay more than lip-service to this important concern. 

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Contact Information:
Debra Eindiguer
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C: 613.240.8921
media@greenparty.ca
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