Reproductive health is critical to solving many of the challenges developing countries face, including pervasive poverty, high mortality rates, and demographic pressure, with its dramatic environmental, economic, and social consequences. That’s why MSH is deeply involved—at the international and local levels—in collaborative efforts to revitalize family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) services as a core element of health programs and economic development.

A shared purpose and goals
MSH projects and programs share the goals of repositioning family planning as a core health intervention while integrating FP/RH services with other essential health services, including primary care and HIV & AIDS services. A key area is encouraging healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy so births are spaced three or more years apart. Birth spacing increases a child’s chances of surviving the first weeks, months, and years of life. A child whose parents use the healthiest spacing of pregnancy is more than twice as likely to survive the first five years of life than a child who is born more closely spaced. Birth spacing also increases a mother’s chances of surviving childbirth by up to 2.5 times and reduces the risk of low birth weight, maternal anemia, preterm birth, stillbirth, and third-trimester bleeding. Birth spacing focuses on achieving the healthiest pregnancy outcomes.

A focus on what we do best
We focus our resources and expertise on activities that promise to have a large impact. These activities include:

• rebuilding national family planning systems;
   
• improving the quality of services by building providers’ capabilities and support systems, as well as developing norms, procedures, and standards;
   
• developing effective systems for managing the supply of contraceptives and other FP/RH commodities;
   
• mobilizing communities—including community health workers, service providers, health officials, and religious and traditional leaders—to support increased access to and use of family planning services.

A job that's only partly done
While contraceptive use worldwide has risen steadily for decades, and many national family planning programs have achieved remarkable successes, the work of ensuring reproductive health for all is a long way from being completed. Today nearly one-third of all women lack access to modern family planning methods, and the annual cost to society is devastating:

• 536,000 deaths from complications of childbirth or pregnancy, with 99 percent occurring in developing countries;
   
• 70,000 deaths due to complications from unsafe abortions;
   
• infant mortality rates that are 10 times higher for motherless newborns than for others.

Without access to information and contraceptives, and decision-making power, women are more likely to contract and spread HIV infection, including transmitting the virus to their infants. And poor maternal health undermines families and robs communities of a vital human resource.

A new commitment to a proven solution
The evidence is clear: FP/RH services can greatly reduce these risks and costs. Yet the focus in recent years on battling infectious diseases has drawn funding and attention away from FP/RH programs, sometimes diminishing their impact. Recognizing what has been lost, MSH and others in the international development community have undertaken a widespread effort to reignite interest and investment in FP/RH at all levels of health systems.