Comments on the Status of Women's Health Worldwide

On January 8, 2010, Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed an audience on the 15th Anniversary of International Conference on Population and Development.

In her address, Sec. Clinton commended the progress that many nations have made over the last half century in terms of gender equality and health care development.

As she notes, "the use of modern contraceptives worldwide has increased from under 10 percent in the 1960s to 43 percent in 2008. We have greater access to neo-natal care, including medicines that prevent the spread of HIV from mother to child. We've significantly increased child survival rates. The number of girls enrolled in schools around the world has gone up."

However, there is still much to be done to secure reproductive justice and adequate health care services for all woman, world wide.

Sec. Clinton continued, "More than 215 million women worldwide lack access to the modern forms of contraception, and this contributes to the nearly 20 million unsafe abortions that take place very year. Sexually transmitted diseases, of course including, but not limited to, HIV and AIDS, claim millions of lives annually among women."

Read more from Sec. Clinton's address, and what the U.S. State Department is doing to win reproductive freedom all over the world.


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