The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has called on the donor community to commit toward building a foundation of a global movement that can fulfil family planning needs in the world. Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, made the call at the plenary session under the theme, “Putting women at the heart of Global Health Agenda” at the Women Deliver Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “About two dozens of governments are now creating plans that incorporate family planning into their women’s and children’s health programs and we must support them,” Melinda said. “Our community is working with the private sector to lower the prices of key supplies such as contraceptive implants; because it will help countries give women affordable options for planning their families and their future,” she added. The UN Population Fund Executive Director, Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, asked governments with family planning challenges to increase their budgets to ensure the problem is given the attention it deserves. “We are committed to supplying family planning products in various countries, but countries have to increase their spending on these products if we are to impact lives,” Dr Osotimehin said. Figures show that 222 million women around the world have an unmet need for family planning, and 645 million women have their needs met through the use of modern family planning methods. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest percentage of women with needs (about 25 per cent of women in the region, some 49 million women either use traditional methods or no method at all. The unmet need for spacing births (16 per cent) is much greater in this region than for limiting births (9 per cent).
