Health: Maternal Health

Viscount Craigavon Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Craigavon]

My Lords, in my brief contribution, I will focus particularly on MDG 5b, which mainly covers the contribution of reproductive health and family planning to the subject of this debate.

As we have heard, the Department for International Development moved the issue forward significantly with its many announcements on 31 December last year, although the specific allocation of money is still to be decided in the spending review that is to come shortly. The headline and bullet points given in a useful article in the Guardian on that day were very encouraging. The article states:

“The coalition government will put contraception and safe abortion at the heart of its efforts to help save women's lives in poor countries … Safe abortion and contraception take centre stage in the framework on maternal health”.

In this context, no one is referring to abortion as a method of family planning. The reference is to safe abortion, as opposed to unsafe abortion that all too often leads to a fatal outcome. The article goes on:

“Family planning to help avoid unwanted pregnancy is considered good value for money – it was estimated in 2008 that modern contraceptive methods cost … £5 … per woman per year”.

It is to be hoped that the forthcoming spending review will also increase the amount that is spent bilaterally directly on family planning, which has recently not increased as much as other, similar aid.

The article also tells us that,

“there will be ‘significant’ spending on reproductive health, with the aim of enabling … women ‘to choose whether, when and how many children to have’”.

I hope that that momentum will also carry over to affect how we contribute funds for development through the EU so that those can be radically reviewed and fed into the process of review within the EU that is going on this year.