Sustainable Development Goals

928 Words4 Pages
Recommendations for post 15 agenda/sustainable development goals Sexual and reproductive health and rights are central to human development. The sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda is centrally inter-linked to all key development agendas: gender equality, human rights, poverty, migration, health, climate change, population dynamics, food security and access to resources. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would not be reached without universal access to reproductive health. This realization led to a new target (Target 5B) being added to MDG 5 (Improve Maternal Health) in 2007. Family planning is an important constituent of reproductive health, recognized by the fact that measures of progress for MDG 5 now include Contraceptive…show more content…
Key messages include: MDG 1: Family planning alleviates poverty and accelerates socioeconomic development. With fewer, healthier children to provide for, families are less likely to become poor. They are also better able to feed and provide health care for their children, which creates a healthier and more productive workforce that can contribute to the economic growth of the nation as a whole.4 On the national level, rapid population growth resulting from high levels of unmet need often outstrips economic growth and undermines a country’s ability to offer adequate educational, health, and other social services to its people.50,51 MDG 2: Family planning can help ensure that all children go to school. Families are more likely to be able to educate their children if they have smaller families.4 For example, some girls are forced to drop out of school early to care for younger siblings. Girls and young women may also be forced to leave school early if they get…show more content…
Women have greater opportunities for education, training, and employment when they can control their fertility. This can increase their financial security, decision-making power in the household, and status in the community.4 Because so much of women’s work consists of unpaid household labor and poorly paid work in the informal economy, their increased productivity may go unnoticed and unmeasured. Yet it is still of enormous importance for moving families out of poverty. MDG 4: Family planning can reduce infant mortality by one-fifth to one-third or even more in some settings - Spacing births 36 to 60 months apart reduces malnutrition as well as neonatal and infant mortality. MDG 5: Family planning reduces maternal mortality in three ways. It decreases the total number of pregnancies, each of which places a woman at risk.3 It prevents pregnancies that are unwanted and hence more likely to end in unsafe abortions, which contribute to one in eight maternal deaths.8 Finally, it reduces the proportion of births that are at greater risk of complications because of the mother’s age, parity, or birth spacing. MDG 6: Family planning can slow the spread of HIV/AIDS. Condoms simultaneously prevent HIV transmission and unwanted pregnancy. Contraceptives also enable HIV-positive women to prevent unwanted pregnancies. This is as cost-effective as antiretroviral drugs in reducing mother-to-child transmission of
Open Document