leaders from around the world, including Bangladesh, convened at the Family Planning Summit in London, United Kingdom, to make bold commitments that will help expand access to family planning to millions of women and girls worldwide.
At the Summit, more than 60 governments and partners pledged commitments of at least $2.5 billion USD by 2020, with the majority of the funding ($1.5 billion USD) committed by countries in Asia and Africa.
Bangladeshi State Minister of Finance Honourable M A Mannan committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. The recently approved 4th Health Sector Programme, 2017-2021 will put the country on track to attaining the original FP2020 targets by 2030. Bangladesh commits to achieving its family planning objectives by implementing the post-partum action plan, regional family planning package for the lagging Sylhet and Chittagong divisions, and the national adolescent health strategy in a time-bound, efficient and effective manner.
The Government of Bangladesh will mobilize $615 million USD for the family planning programme over 2017-2021, a 67% increase in allocation from that of the pre-2017 programme. Bangladesh will improve the quality of family planning services through a health systems approach, including by increasing training to service providers, deploying additional midwives to all sub-district hospitals and placing clinical teams to supervise family planning services in all districts.
Additionally, Bangladesh will work with the private sector to help address gaps in service provision and will ensure a steady supply of commodities. Raw audio and video footage of all Summit commitments will be available in the next 48 hours at this link: http://gatesfoundation.isebox.net/2017fps
Bangladesh’s commitment will go a long way in reaching thousands of women and girls with critical reproductive health information. Bangladesh has over 3.5 million married and sexually active unmarried adolescents (aged 15-19) of whom 18% have an unmet need for contraception. If Bangladesh was to increase its focus on adolescents, enabling an additional 373,000 adolescent girls to use modern contraception by 2020, then we would see a 26% reduction in its adolescent birth rate.
