United Nations Population Fund

Women in the United States have access to prenatal care, contraceptives and sophisticated care during labor and delivery of their babies. Deaths related to childbirth are a rare phenomenon. Access to good reproductive health care gives American women choice as to when and how many children they will have and the comfort that most American born babies will survive their childhood. Unfortunately the same statements cannot be made about women who live in many developing countries.

"Poor health is both a cause and consequence of poverty" as stated in the United Nations state of the world population 2002. In Africa 40% of the disease burden is related to poor reproductive health. A woman’s risk of dying during childbirth in Africa is 1 in 16, in Asia 1/132, in Latin America 1/188; compare that to 1 in 3700 for women in North America. Over a half a million women a year die worldwide from complications of childbirth. For each woman that dies many are left with disabilities caused by pregnancy complications. Each year more than a million children are left without a mother due to maternal mortality. Most American women receive prenatal care and deliver with the assistance of a well-trained midwife or physician. Only 58% of women in developing countries have access to a trained professional, only 40% deliver at a hospital or birth center.

Controlling family size is critical to an individual woman’s quality of life and, on a global scale, acts to decrease poverty. Access to contraception, something most American women take for granted, is critical to a woman’s ability to plan the number of children she wants to have. In countries where access to medical care is limited access to effective contraception can also be a matter of life and death. Meeting the world’s need for contraception could reduce maternal mortality by more than 20%.Worldwide, more than a quarter of all pregnancies end in abortion; regardless of whether the procedure is legal or illegal. The most effective way to decrease the number of abortions is to increase the use of contraceptives.

The United Nations population fund (UNFPA) supports developing countries by improving access to and the quality of reproductive health care. Reproductive health includes family planning, prevention of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, care during pregnancy and childbirth. UNFPA is funded entirely by voluntary contributions from government and nongovernmental sources. With a budget of about 270 million dollars it provided services to about 140 developing countries. Last July President Bush decided not to grant the agency the $34million appropriated for this cause by Congress. UNFPA estimates this money would have prevented 2 million more unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths, 60,000 cases of serious maternal illness and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths.

Many times we read about the problems, poverty and disease in other countries and are left with a feeling that the problem is so massive there is nothing we as individuals can do. Or disagree with the action of an elected official and have a similar feeling of impotence. Two women, Jane Roberts and Lois Abraham, independently decided to do something more than just write letters to their congressmen or editors of local newspapers. They sent emails to friends and other networks and organizations asking them to donate one dollar or more to help decrease the gap left by the United States withdrawal of funding to UNFPA. Thus was born the 34 Million Friends Campaign.

Helped by publicity from newspaper columnists the fund had raised $430,677 by January 29, 2003.

If 34 million women each send a dollar to the campaign it will allow the UNFPA to provide essential reproductive health services to some of the poorest women in the world and send a message that "providing family planning and reproductive health care to women in need is a humanitarian issue-not a political one- supported by millions of Americans"

More information on the 34 Million Friends Campaign and how to donate can be found on their web site www.unfpa.org/support/34million.htm. Donations can also be mailed to The United Nations Population Fund, Attn: Chief, resource Mobilization Branch, 220 East 42^nd St, 23^rd floor, NY, NY 10017.