|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Send this press release to a colleague
Hopkins Report: Reproduction Revolution Continues in
Developing Countries But Many Health Needs Remain Unmet
BALTIMORE—Birth rates in developing countries have continued to decline since 1990, as people want to have fewer children and contraceptive use increases, according to the latest issue of Population Reports published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs (CCP). Still, many couples are having more children than they would prefer.
Moreover, child survival rates lag far behind international goals for 2000 set a decade earlier. An average of 11 million children under age five died each year in developing countries during the 1990s. In some countries the AIDS epidemic offset improvements in child survival, according to the report from CCP's Information and Knowledge for Optimal Health (INFO) project (http://www.infoforhealth.org). Full text of the report can be seen on line at: http://www.populationreports.org/m17/.
The report summarizes findings from 120 surveys of women in 71 countries conducted since 1990 as part of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Reproductive Health Surveys (RHS) programs. Sixty of the countries are in the developing world. Eleven others are in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.
Over 600 million married women worldwide use contraception-500 million in developing countries. Today, about 55% of married women in developing countries use family planning, up from 41% in 1990. By contrast, 68% or more in the developed world use family planning, according to the Hopkins report. In developing countries about 9 in every 10 contraceptive users rely on modern methods such as female sterilization, oral contraceptives, injectables, and IUDs rather than traditional methods of periodic abstinence and withdrawal.
While contraceptive use continues to rise overall, in some 10 sub-Saharan African countries less than 10% of married women use contraception. Such a variance in use results in a wide range of fertility rates around the world. In Vietnam, for example, the fertility rate is 2.3 children per woman; in Niger it is 7.2. Regionally, fertility is highest in sub-Saharan Africa, at 5.3 children per woman , and lowest in Asia and in Latin America at 3.5, based on averages of the 60 surveyed countries.
Despite high fertility in some countries, the recent surveys show that, increasingly, women want fewer children. An estimated 105 million married women, about 1 in every 5, have an unmet need for family planning—that is they are sexually active and want to avoid pregnancy, but are not using contraception, according to the Hopkins report.
While the percentage of such women fell in many countries during the 1990s as they began using contraception, the number of women entering their reproductive years increased. Thus the overall total of married women with an unmet need has changed little.
Surveys do provide fresh evidence of a fertility decline in some sub-Saharan Africa countries. For example, in 9 of 16 Sub-Saharan countries surveyed more than once since 1990, fertility fell by more than one percent per year. The transition to lower fertility appears much slower in Africa compared with earlier transitions elsewhere, however.
Surveys during the 1990s also provide new information about maternal and child survival and health:
- Just 30 of 56 countries surveyed from 1990 to 2001 achieved goals for infant survival set at the 1990 World Summit for Children. Reasons include reduced commitment to childhood immunization programs, conflicts and civil strife, and in countries hit hard by the epidemic, HIV/AIDS.
- Childhood immunization levels also have fallen far short of the 1990 Summit
goals as of the most recent survey, only two countries reached full immunization
for 90% of all children under age one.
- Only half of women in developing countries give birth in the presence of medically skilled personnel, a figure that has remained steady since 1990.
The authors of the latest issue of Population Reports: New Survey Findings: The Reproductive Revolution Continues are Vera Zlidar, Robert Gardner, Shea Rutstein, Leo Morris, Howard Goldberg, and Kiersten Johnson. Fourteen data tables that appear in the printed report with added data from surveys before 1990 can be found at http://www.populationreports.org/m17/m17tables.shtml. Eleven other data tables that are referred to in the printed report but not published also are available on the Web at the same site. A CD-ROM "Surveys Package" is also available and includes Excel files of all tables used in preparing the report, as well as the full text of the report and the additional tables, plus POPLINE abstracts of the most helpful bibliographic items in the reports.
For printed copies of the report and/or the CD-ROM send an e-mail to Orders@jhuccp.org, or write to Orders Department, Johns Hopkins University, Center for Communication Programs Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202 USA. A web based order form can also be found at: http://www.jhuccp.org/cgi-bin/orders/orderform.cgi
Population Reports is an international review journal of important issues in population, family planning, and related matters. It is published four times a year in three languages by the Information and Knowledge for Optimal Health (INFO) project at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, Bloomberg School of Public Health, for more than 160,000 family planning and other health professionals worldwide, with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID administers the US foreign assistance program, providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 80 countries worldwide.
For more information contact: Stephen Goldstein at Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA. Tel: 410 659-6331; Fax: 410 659-6266 e-mail: PopReprts@jhuccp.org or press@jhuccp.org. WEB SITE: http://www.infoforhealth.org |
