Family Planning and Reproductive Health

Service providers worldwide, facing the spread of HIV/AIDS, found it increasingly irresponsible to provide the means of family planning without counseling clients on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and other health issues affecting reproduction. These providers and others realized that the ability to make responsible and informed choices about sexual and reproductive health is both a condition and a vehicle for improving the status of women. Governments, international agencies and non-governmental organizations worldwide affirmed in 1994 that reproductive health services should be comprehensive, client-centered, and non-coercive.[1]

In reality, service providers in developing countries may have to choose between providing basic services for everybody in an area or offering a broad range of services for fewer people. They often have to make crucial choices at the clinic level-for example, whether or not to provide IUDs where no screening is available for reproductive tract infections. Clients' involvement is essential, as their priorities are not necessarily the same as those of service providers.

Comprehensive family planning and reproductive health services can include:[2]

1. The International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, Egypt in 1994. Information on the consensus reached at Cairo is available from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). http://www.unfpa.org.

2. This list was compiled from documents of the International Planned Parenthood Federation; USAID; the World Bank; UNFPA; The International Projects Assistance League; International Women's Health Coalition; the Older Women's League; Population Action International; the Rockefeller Foundation; and the World Health Organization.