Access to reproductive health services is crucial to reducing poverty, said a United Nations official in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, who called for more improvements in this area.
Imelda Henkin, deputy executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), said poverty is intimately linked with a lack of access to family planning and reproductive health.
The world's population is predicted to reach 9.1 billion in 2050. But that could change if people had the means to decide when and how often to have children.
Speaking at the three-day International Symposium on Official Development Assistance for Population and Development, she urged governments to devote more efforts to offering reproductive health services to all people.
"Every developing country should have a budget line for reproductive health and reproductive health commodities. Key to these efforts is reproductive health commodity security - making sure that condoms and contraceptives and other supplies are available at the right time, at the right place and at the right price," Henkin said.
She called on donors to give higher priority to supplies in their assistance packages and to ensure that countries have made adequate budgetary and institutional provisions for commodity purchases and logistics. Countries receiving assistance should ensure that commodities are one of the components of the essential drugs list.
The UNFPA appealed to the international community to contribute US$150 million dollars per year until 2015 to enhance reproductive health commodity security. 2015 is the target for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Henkin stressed that greater progress must also be made in integrating efforts for sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS and the best way to reach women is through established reproductive health, ante-natal and family planning services free of coercion, discrimination and violence.
Also at the symposium yesterday, experts from both home and abroad discussed questions concerning Official Development Assistance for population and development in eastern China.
More than 200 experts from about 30 countries attended the symposium, which ends tomorrow. The symposium will review progress and challenges encountered in ODA.