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| Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah |
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African First Ladies, along with experts and spokespeople from a wide range of health, education, development and philanthropic organizations, convened in Los Angeles this week to focus on HIV/AIDS, maternal, reproductive and child health, and girls’ education in Africa.
The purpose of the conference was to enable the First Ladies to become effective champions for change in their countries. The First Lady participants, from Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo, Gambia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia, were encouraged to share their own work and engage in moderated panel discussions with invited health and development experts.
Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, vice president of Ipas Africa Alliance and former minister of health for Ghana, spoke at a panel titled, “Maternal Health: Development Considerations.” The discussion centered on family planning and strategies to combat unintended pregnancy. Brookman-Amissah urged participants to work to address the high unmet need for contraception in Africa, where the average contraceptive prevalence rate is 15 percent. She also pointed out to the panel that every year more than five million African women choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Many resort to unsafe abortion, which causes 36,000 deaths and millions of injuries and disabilities in Africa each year, she noted. “We can’t pretend this problem doesn’t exist,” she said, urging the First Ladies to work toward the prevention of unsafe abortion.
Summit sponsors hope that the conference will help to build collaborative, pragmatic approaches to solving complex social and health problems in Africa. The summit hosted nearly 300 participants, including the First Ladies.
For more information, contact media@ipas.org