Former President Bill Clinton and Bill Gates Address the Importance of Investing in Family Planning

Washington, March 15, 2010 -- Former president Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, testified on Capitol Hill last Wednesday and explained the importance of investing in family planning programs worldwide.

During the hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee entitled “Building on Success: New Directions in Global Health,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) brought up family planning and asked “how can we move this debate beyond this topic being controversial to being another way to accomplish what we need to deliver health care for people around the world?”

Mr. Gates responded “What voluntary family planning means is bringing down by choice the rate of population growth and having more birth spacing and that's very dramatic in terms of improving maternal health. If you wait two years between children, it cuts more than half the chance that there will be a maternal complication.”

 “And so it's very effective and, you know, these very poor places, the high population growth caused because you don't have access to these tools when you want them, that builds in huge problems for the future. And so it's great to see the U.S. looking at these investments... It's important spending. It's an area that our foundation prioritizes as well,” Mr. Gates added.

Mr. Clinton added “I mean, these poor women, they're just trying to manage their lives and if they space out the births like Bill said, they can do their jobs as mothers, they can still work and earn income for the family. They -- it changes everything for them.”

“And so I personally think that your best bet is for people who are -- whether they are visually for this or visually against it to actually see it, see how it works in real people's lives, I think that would change things,” Mr. Clinton said.

The full statements can be accessed here: http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/20100310_2/

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