‘Unwanted pregnancies’ can be avoided

LONDON: More than 200 million women who did not want to get pregnant used no contraceptives at all or relied on risky methods to avoid pregnancy, often due to a lack of access, money or information in the poor countries they called home, a study found today.

The report said that if the women had reliable contraceptives, there would be a drop in the number of unwanted pregnancies, down from about 89 million a year to 22 million.

“Meeting the sexual and reproductive health needs of women in developing regions is an achievable and affordable goal,” said Ann Starrs, whose Guttmacher Institute produced the report.

Many women in Africa, Asia and Latin America lack the resources and facilities to get hold of modern contraceptives, according to the USbased research group. Some facts about contraception and maternal health:

214 million women who want to avoid pregnancy are not using a modern contraceptive method. Of these, 155 million use nothing. The rest use unreliable birth control.

Almost half of pregnancies in the developing world are unintended, coming too soon or to women who do not want babies.

Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia are home to almost 60% of the women who want to avoid pregnancy, but cannot access proper contraception.

Globally, 21.6 million women have unsafe abortions each year, nine out of 10 of which take place in developing countries, according to the World Health Organisation.

Many women do not use contraceptives for fear of side effects or because they do not think they are at risk of getting pregnant if they don’t have sex often.

About 35 million women giving birth this year will not deliver in a health facility, according to the institute.

This year, an estimated 300 000 women in poor countries would die of pregnancy-related causes and 2.7 million babies would die in the first month of life, the report said. – Thomson Reuters Foundation