Sexual and Reproductive Health for All: twenty Years of The Global Strategy

Thirty years earlier, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, Egypt, underscored the right of all people to achieve the highest requirement of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). In 2004, WHO released a reproductive health method - ratified by 191 Member States at the Fifty-seventh World Health Assembly - that strengthened the centrality of SRHR to societies and economies (Resolution WHA57.12). These frameworks are grounded in gender equality and recognize the unchanging significance of sexual health in accomplishing health for all.

WHO researchers worked with Member States, civil society and communities across all regions to operationalize a Global Strategy to cover the five crucial pillars for enhancing SRHR:

- improving antenatal, perinatal, postpartum and newborn care

- providing family planning services

- getting rid of unsafe abortion

- fighting sexually sent infections (STIs).

- promoting sexual health.

Resolution WHA57.12 additional informed SRHR policies and assisting files in a number of regions and Member States. For instance, Latin America's 2013 Montevideo Consensus and Africa's Maputo Plan of Action from 2016 (structure upon the initial 2006 strategy) both consist of language and concepts strengthening and promoting SRHR.

" The international method is the foundational policy file that centres WHO's required for sexual and reproductive health to date," said Dr Pascale Allotey, Director of the UN Special Programme on Human Reproduction (HRP) and WHO's Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health. "The text remains important in contributing to directing research concerns and working with countries to establish useful resources to make sure comprehensive SRHR across the life course."

Significant progress has actually been made over the last 20 years within each of the five pillars, including these examples.

- The Global technique happened as the world was reeling from the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Today, the variety of individuals getting HIV has fallen by 38% since 2010 alone, due in part to the Strategy's focus on removing STIs including HIV.

- Since March 2022, 60% of WHO Member States have included the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) in their regular immunization schedules, significantly advancing efforts to remove cervical cancer as a public health hazard.

- Prioritizing family preparation services and contraception access led to WHO's Family planning: a worldwide handbook for suppliers recommendation guide, which has been shared over a million times. Accordingly, the proportion of women utilizing modern-day contraceptive techniques increased from 467 million in 1990 to 874 million in 2022, while a larger range of contraceptive alternatives is now available.


A 2020 research study found that there has been a worldwide decline in unintended pregnancy. Furthermore, evidence-based medical abortion regimens have actually improved worldwide access to abortion, and over 60 nations have liberalized abortion laws in the past 30 years in line with evidence on the significance of such efforts to ensure the health of women and adolescent ladies.

Professor Kate Gilmore, co-chair of the Gender and Human Rights Advisory Panel of HRP, credited the Strategy and WHO for helping produce crucial scientific proof on SRHR that has actually added to a few of these shifts. "A few of the fantastic advances that we have actually seen - consisting of the way civil society has actually used up the cause to argue for access to safe and legal abortion - are due to the Strategy and the systematic generation of evidence over these past 20 years," she said.

Despite early gains, however, recent years have seen signs of stagnation. From 2000 to 2020, the maternal death rate come by 34% around the world - but a 2023 report discovered that development has mainly stalled because. The was illustrated during a current occasion showcasing international datasets on the development of SRHR because ICPD. High maternal death rates continue a few nations and sexual health issues, such as endometriosis, infertility and sexual erectile dysfunction, are often overlooked or stabilized.

Dr Allotey and Dr Manjulaa Narasimhan, scientist at WHO and HRP, kept in mind in a recent commentary in the WHO Bulletin that the SRHR program stays unfinished and in some instances has actually regressed due to geopolitical tensions, economic declines, the global food crisis, environment modification, humanitarian crises and COVID-19.

There are emerging opportunities to catalyse progress - for instance, by improving human rights-based methods in SRHR and embedding concepts like non-discrimination, consisting of in crisis circumstances. Improving health systems with a primary health-care approach can enhance equity and expand access to comprehensive SRHR services. New innovations and alternative service delivery approaches can enhance SRHR by broadening gain access to, choice and autonomy.

Other future-looking focus locations within SRHR consist of research on the transformative function of synthetic intelligence and innovative contraception methods, additional work on enhancing health systems, and the withstanding prioritization of positive pregnancy and childbirth experiences.

At a more comprehensive level, Dr Allotey called for a continued emphasis on the fundamental importance of SRHR. "Sexual and reproductive health need to never ever be relegated to the margins of health care, however acknowledged as vital for the total well-being of people and the neighborhoods in which they live," she stated.