Contraceptives save more than a quarter of a million women every year
Last reviewed: 16.05.2018
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The use of contraceptives annually saves lives of more than a quarter of a million women, protecting them either from death during childbirth, or from unsafe abortions.
For example, in 2008 alone, 355,000 women died during childbirth, as well as from illegal or unsafe abortions. At the same time, thanks to contraception, which reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies, more than 250 thousand deaths were prevented.
The authors of the study, experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (Great Britain), note that if all women in developing countries, who wanted to avoid pregnancy, use an effective method of contraception, the number of maternal deaths would fall by another 30%.
Over the past twenty years, the growth of contraceptive use in developing countries has reduced maternal mortality by 40%. There are advantages for children: in poor countries, the risk of premature birth and low birth weight at birth is doubled if conception occurs within six months after the previous birth. And children born in the two-year period after the birth of their elder brother or sister die 60% more often in infancy.
Last year, the earth's population reached 7 billion people; by 2050, according to the UN forecasts, it will be 9.3 billion, and by 2100 will exceed 10 billion. Demographic growth will mainly concentrate in the poorest countries of the world, especially in Africa.
Let's remind that about 15 million babies are born before the end of the year, that is, every tenth newborn. More than a million of them die almost immediately, the rest during life are physically or neurologically disabled or unavailable, which is expensive for their families and society.
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