The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called upon all countries to ensure that women everywhere have access to family planning services.

Ki-moon says family planning is a critical element to improving maternal health, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or global targets world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015.

He says that studies have shown that family planning has immediate benefits for the lives and health of mothers and their infants

According to Ki-moon, ensuring basic access to family planning could reduce maternal deaths by a third and child deaths by as much as 20 per cent.

He expressed concern that the benefits of family planning remain out of reach for many, especially for those who often have the hardest time getting the information and services they need to plan their families, such as the poor, marginalized populations and young people.

The Secretary-General called on governments to honour the commitments made at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, when they agreed that all couples and individuals have the basic human right to not only decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children, but also to have the information, education and means to do so.

He says that improving maternal health – MDG 5 – is lagging the furthest behind among all the targets.

Ki-moon says that the rate of death for women as they give birth remains the starkest indicator of the disparity between rich and poor, both within and among countries.

He noted the three basic interventions necessary to improve maternal health: skilled attendance at the time of birth, facilities to provide emergency obstetric care and family planning.

Source: UGPulse.com, 12 July 2008