In sub-Saharan Africa, 270,000 women die each year due to complications from pregnancy and childbirth.
We know access to family planning can reduce this number. Yet for 35 million women in the region, family planning supplies and services remain out of reach.
The above video from FHI360 highlights one strategy for bringing that number down: improving access by training health workers to provide community-based distribution of injectable contraceptives, such as Depo-Provera. But there are many reasons women don’t get the reproductive health care they need: shortage of doctors, poor infrastructure and transportation, and stock-outs of contraceptives and other critical supplies, to name a few.
That’s why PAI is joining other advocates this week at the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition’s annual meeting in Mexico City. For 10 years, the Coalition has brought together more than 300 concerned individuals and organizations from around the world to work on overcoming the hurdles that keep women from the supplies they need. Want to know more? You can watch the meeting live here and follow the action on twitter with the hashtag #decadeofsupplies.
