When I started writing this blog there were roughly 7,516,224,177 people alive on this planet. That is 200,000 people more than yesterday, and 200,000 fewer than tomorrow. That means there are roughly 3,728,047,191.8 girls and women alive today.
Why am I hounding you with stats? Because today is World Population Day – a day to look at the bigger picture and focus on population issues such as overcrowding, conservation and the global economics. The theme of this year’s World Population Day is ‘Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations’.
This topic is particularly close to my heart as I have spent the last two years at HAVAS Just:: working within the field of women’s health and learning about innovative contraception methods available to women in developed countries – options we take for granted, but are not available to every woman. Access to safe family planning is a human right, yet 225 million women who want to avoid pregnancy are not able to use reliable contraception, for diverse reasons such as a lack of access to information and services.
Family planning is vital in developing countries. It allows couples to decide whether they want children, and when to have them, meaning they can save money to give their family a better life. It allows teenage girls to finish their education and pursue work. While we in the developed world are becoming more open to discussing formerly taboo topics like menstruation and contraception, to the point where even the opposite sex know a fair amount about the topic, developing countries face both a lack of information and little access to contraception.
From an economic perspective, it would only cost £5.50 per woman to provide a year of safe, modern contraception. Safe and reliable contraceptives could prevent 14 million unsafe abortions and 6 million miscarriages could be avoided each year – the economic burden in terms of healthcare would be eased. With the global population set to increase to 10 billion by 2050, more than ever it is important that we consider how to protect all women and empower them to be able to decide when and if they would like to have children.
To coincide with World Population Day, Family Planning 2020 have organised the Family Planning Summit, in partnership with a host of charities including UKaid, UNFPA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The aim of the summit is to expand access to family planning services to a further 120 million women by 2020.
If like us, you want to learn more about the importance of family planning or keep up to date with the Family Planning Summit outcomes, then follow #herfuture on Twitter.