A Message to Congress: Don’t Shortchange Family Planning
06/29/2011
Family planning may be one of the best bargains in the world when it comes to investments in health
Pape Amadou Gaye, president and CEO of IntraHealth International, spent yesterday on Capitol Hill talking about the importance of family planning in West Africa, including his native Senegal. He has three decades of leadership in international health with extensive field experience in Africa and has been the leader for seven years of IntraHealth, which has 20 offices worldwide and 500 employees.
Gaye talked with John Donnelly about his messages to Congress on family planning. This is the second in a two-part series; the first story was an interview with Dr. Bocar Daff, head of reproductive health in Senegal's Ministry of Health and Prevention.
Q: What's your most important message on family planning in Africa to tell members of Congress?
A: For me, it's time for revitalizing family planning in Francophone Africa. We are lagging behind in so many ways. We are ranked last in the world, in fact. There is an untold story about what a big impact USAID made in family planning in the 1980s. But then USAID decided to close its doors, and we lost all those gains.
Read the full blog.
Watch an 80 second video http://www.empty-handed.org about the lack of availability of contraceptives in Africa. The least the world could do, it seems to me, is to have adequate contraceptives where they are needed 24-7 as they say. From Jane of 34 Million Friends of UNFPA http://www.34millionfriends.org
— Jane Roberts on 2011-07-12