In news : The Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare digitally addressed a high-level virtual event titled “Family Planning 2020: Celebrating Progress, Transforming for the future”, through a Video Conference.
Purpose of the event
The purpose of this event was to celebrate the FP-2020 partnership, the release of the Annual Progress Report for 2019-2020, and kick off the commitment process for the next phase of the partnership.
About Family Planning 2020
- Family Planning 2020(FF2020) is a global partnership to empower women and girls by investing in rights-based family planning.
- FF2020 works with with governments, civil society, multilateral organizations, donors, the private sector, and the research and development community to enable 120 million more women and girls to use contraceptives by 2020
- Achieving the FP2020 goal is a critical milestone to ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and rights by 2030, as laid out in Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 5.
- FP2020 is in support of the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.
- Origin: FP2020 is an outcome of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning where more than 20 governments made commitments to address the policy, financing, delivery and socio-cultural barriers to women accessing contraceptive information, services and supplies and donors pledged an additional US$2.6 billion in funding.
- Since then, the number of countries with FP2020 commitments has grown to 46 and, in 2015 alone, donors provided US $1.3 billion in bilateral funding for family planning.
- Five years later on the anniversary of the London Summit, the international community gathered for the 2017 Family Planning Summit for Safer, Healthier, and Empowered Futures to renew its commitment to the FP2020 partnership, growing to include more than 120 commitment-making partners.
- Led by an 23-member Reference Group, operated daily by a Secretariat, and hosted by the United Nations Foundation, FP2020 is based on the principle that all women, no matter where they live, should have access to lifesaving contraceptives.
Key findings
India’s status
- As per the report, over 139 million women and girls in India now use modern methods of contraception
- The report was published by FP2020, a global partnership that supports the reproductive rights of women and girls, details the progress achieved in family planning over the past eight years
- As per the report, in 13 low-income countries, the number of modern contraceptive users has doubled since 2012 and more than 121 million unintended pregnancies, 21 million unsafe abortions, and 1,25,000 maternal deaths were prevented in the last year alone
- As a result of contraceptive use in India, more than 54.5 million unintended pregnancies were prevented, and 1.8 million unsafe abortions and 23,000 maternal deaths averted in the last year alone.
India’s renewed commitment
In 2017, India updated its FP2020 commitment with two very specific, data-driven pledges:
- To invest $3 billion of domestic resources in family planning by 2020, and
- to increase the country’s modern contraceptive prevalence for married women from 53.1 percent to 54.3 percent by 2020, with 74 per cent of the demand for modern contraceptives satisfied. Both of those commitments have been fulfilled.
According to the report, India continues to be one of the countries with the highest levels of domestic government expenditure, reflecting the governments’ commitment to its family planning programmes.
World’s perspective
- According to the report, this year’s data includes estimates for 54 countries amounting to nearly $1.6 billion in spending.
- Most of that figure is attributable to just five countries: India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines
- The report said 320 million women and girls in the world’s 69 lowest-income countries now have access to family planning, according to new figures released by Family Planning 2020 (FP2020)
