1 February 2007 - immediate release

Contraception must be top of agenda

A report, Return of the Population Growth Factor, issued yesterday in London has confirmed that contraception must be put back on the top of the agenda for international efforts to alleviate global poverty.

The report by the UK all Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development says there is overhwleming evidence that the UN's millennium development goals (MDGs) will be missed if population growth is not curbed. The MDGs include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

Ms Christina Richards, CEO of the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance, welcomed the report which states that the population explosion in the developing world has led to an increase in the number of people living in extreme poverty - from 231 million in 1990 to 318 million today.

"If we are to alleviate this exteme poverty, we have to quickly reduce population growth in poor countries," Ms Richards said. "Universal access to contraception, along with along with a full range of reproductive services, is an itegral part of achieving this."

"According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, an average of 25,000 people on our planet are now dying of starvation every day, and more than 800 million are undernourished. The new UK report presents overwhelming evidence the death and hunger rates will only increase unless world leaders overcome their head-in-the-sand attitudes about population growth and put the availability of contraception at the centre of their efforts to alleviate global poverty and starvation.

"It gives many examples, such as Ethiopia. In 1984, the year of Ethiopia's infamous famine, the population was 42 million. Today it has reached 75 million and by 2050 it is expectd to reach 145 million. At the moment 8 million Ethiopians live on permanent food aid.

"ARHA has made arrangements with the UK Group to distribute the report widely to politicians and policy makers in international aid in Australia. We ask that Australia adopt the latest UN recommendation which is for at least 10 per cent of the overseas aid budget to be devoted to reproductive health programs including HIV/AIDS prevention and family planning," Ms Richards said.

A pdf version of the report is available at What's New, ARHA website, www.arha.org.au

Media contact: Christina Richards 02 6282 8922, 0427 884 479