Social Innovation: All Women Should Have Access to Contraception Globally

In our world today, low-income countries are affected by the lack of social innovation and access to modern family planning methods: 54 percent of women who want to avoid pregnancy don't have access to contraceptives. One U.K. based organisation trying to do something about it is WomanCare Global. This not-for-profit seeks to improve the lives of women by providing affordable, quality reproductive health products. The organisation believes that any woman, no matter where she lives, should have control over her reproductive health and family planning needs, ultimately improving her ability to care for herself and her family.

If women had access to the contraceptives they wanted, unintended pregnancies could drop by over 70 percent, and newborn deaths could fall by 44 percent; 150,000 maternal deaths could be avoided, then 600,000 children would not lose their mothers. Powerful figures! WomanCare Global strives for social innovation to close the gaps between the availability of products in developing countries versus the developed world by creating safe choices for women and their families. Moreover, by addressing the needs for modern contraceptives, it would mean most countries would then be able to meet one of the Millennium Development Goals of reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three-fourths, and would be further along in achieving a two-thirds decline in infant and child mortality.

One of the shocking truths that WomenCare  Global reminds us about is that sexual violence is a cruel act affecting millions of women and girls - as one in five women worldwide will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. For example, in armed conflict, systematic rape is often used as a military tactic and women are raped repeatedly as a weapon of war. This is where the work and social innovation of WomanCare Global comes in as it distributes products through the United Nation's reproductive health kits for use in crisis situations.

Family planning represents one of the most cost-effective public health social innovation interventions available in the world right now and is also a choice that more than 200 million women globally do not have access to make. I'll leave you with the thoughts of Saundra Pelletier, CEO of WomanCare Global, who says, "Women are the cornerstone of every society around the world.  When women are empowered, everyone benefits ? children, families and entire communities.  Empowerment starts with women being able to control their own reproductive choices. Attention is needed to highlight that women still do not have access to safe, affordable and high-quality reproductive choices."