A partnership to improve poor women’s access to contraceptive devices was introduced Sept. 26 at the U.N. headquarters in New York, USA. The goal: Prevent up to 30 million unwanted pregnancies between 2013 and 2018.
The partnership comprises the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the United Kingdom, the United States, Norway, the Children Investment Fund Foundation and Bayer HealthCare AG, among other groups. It is designed to help make Jadelle, an injectable contraceptive device produced by Bayer, available to some 27 million in the world’s poorest countries.
Jadelle is a pre-qualified contraceptive device by the World Health Organization that was developed with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. It is inserted into the upper arm and can prevent pregnancy for up to five years. Women using it can remove the device anytime.
Bayer has agreed to cut down the device’s price, currently at $18 per piece, by at least half. This is in return for a promise by donors to purchase 27 million devices between 2013 and 2018. This agreement will take effect in January next year.
The partnership also involves training of health workers and providing family planning counseling in target countries, which cover those least likely to meet the Millennium Development Goal on improving maternal health and reducing the number of child deaths by two-thirds by 2015.
This is the second partnership focused on increasing access to contraceptive devices to be announced in the past six months. A similar effort by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Kingdom, USAID, PATH, U.N. Population Fund and Pfizer was unveiled at the London Summit on Family Planning held in July.
The new partnership’s launch coincides with the commemoration of World Contraception Day and is also in line with the U.N. General Assembly’s focus on women and girls.
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Ivy Mungcal
As former senior staff writer, Ivy Mungcal contributed to several Devex publications. Her focus is on breaking news, and in particular on global aid reform and trends in the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Before joining Devex in 2009, Ivy produced specialized content for U.S. and U.K.-based business websites.