More must be done to increase access to family planning services for women in rural areas

"If family planning services, including information about reproductive health, access to birth control, and health care, were available to all women, the deaths of 100,000 women during childbirth could be prevented every year," Maeve Shearlaw, policy and advocacy coordinator for the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, writes in this post in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog. "In other words, access to family planning saves lives," she writes, adding, "Clearly, more must be done to reach women in rural areas and to increase demand in places where women don't even know about family planning methods. It is also important to focus on girls and young women, who are more at risk of losing their lives in childbirth -- yet simultaneously much less able to reach family planning services" (4/2).