In all, that's about $3.1 billion that the United Nations and the Bill Gates Foundation will provide over the next five years so that women and girls around the world have access to family planning.

The information was announced by the Family Planning 2030 partnership that brings together several civil organizations to protect the reproductive rights of women and girls, through a statement.

The Family Planning 2030 partnership reports that the financial commitment was reached at an event marking the launch of a new decade of the program, FP2020 launched in 2012 - and is mainly the result of donations from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which has pledged $1.7 billion over the next four years, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which will donate $1.4 billion over the next five years.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and Fòs Feminist, an international platform of organizations that advocate for the reproductive rights of women and girls, have also pledged donations.

FP2030 also applauds commitments made by several African governments, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea Conakry, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda.

According to FP2030, quoted by Lusa, the number of actors committed to the goals of the partnership has thus increased to 46.

Burkina Faso has pledged to ensure availability of and access to quality reproductive health information and services tailored to the needs of adolescent girls and young women in 100% public health facilities by 2025, while Ethiopia has pledged to increase funding for family planning services and has set a target of reducing adolescent pregnancy from 12.5% to 7% by 2025 and to 3% by 2030.

For its part, Guinea will substantially increase the availability, quality, and accessibility of family planning services to ensure that by 2023 they are available in 90% of public health facilities. Kenya wants to increase the prevalence rate of modern contraceptive use from 58% to 64% of married women by 2030.

Nigeria has promised to increase family planning funding by allocating a minimum of 1% from the national and state health budgets to fund family planning by 2030.

Tanzania will reduce the adolescent pregnancy rate from 27% to 20% by 2025 and to increase the prevalence rate of modern contraceptive use for all women from 32% in 2019 to 47% by 2030. while Uganda has promised to allocate 10% of maternal and child health resources to adolescent reproductive health services by July 2025 and to increase modern contraceptive use from 30.4% in 2020 to 39.6% by 2025.

Since its launch in 2012, the statement stresses, FP2020 has helped increase the number of people using contraceptives by 60 million in nine years, doubling the number of modern contraceptive users in 13 low-income countries, preventing more than 121 million unwanted pregnancies, 21 million unsafe abortions and 125,000 maternal deaths in 2019 alone.

Source Lusa