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Nitish wins praise as family planning bounces back
When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a 'family planning summit' in London this week, jointly with the British government, it sounded like something from the distant past. I asked Melinda Gates about it.
When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a 'family planning summit' in London this week, jointly with the British government, it sounded like something from the distant past. I asked Melinda Gates about it.
"Because of the huge mistakes made in India, Peru and the US, we backed away from it in the global health agenda, instead of learning from the mistakes and making changes," she replied. "So we ended up with this situation today where 200 million women don't have access to contraception."
The summit saw countries pledge $4.3 billion to help give 120 million women access to contraceptives by 2020. It's an ambitious goal and India - which spends around $1 billion a year of its own money on family planning - is key to achieving it, along with Philippines and Africa.
"The two places in India that have not really been reached are UP and Bihar, and my personal opinion is that Bihar will get going a little bit quicker just because they have been building up so much infrastructure," Gates said.
"I think their Asha (accredited social health activists) workers are particularly effective in some areas. And there's just such an amazing leadership from the chief minister (Nitish Kumar) - we are seeing huge increases in vaccination rates. The new government in UP gives us optimism as well."
The 1970s project had the tacit support of some Western population experts. This time around, Prime Minister David Cameron is clear that it isn't "some kind of Western imposed population control, forced abortion or sterilisation."
Neither should donors try to link population growth in Africa with carbon emissions and climate change. Conversations with delegates from both poor and rich countries left me with the impression that climate change considerations did figure in the calculations of some donor government officials.
The move to give the world's poorest women a greater say over decisions on childbirth and ensuring access to contraception should be an end in itself. That, surely, is main lesson to be drawn from the mistakes of the 1970s.
