"Voluntary family planning services will reach an additional 120 million women and girls in the world's poorest countries by 2020 thanks to a new set of commitments announced [at the London Summit on Family Planning on Wednesday] by more than 150 leaders from donor and developing countries, international agencies, civil society, foundations and the private sector," a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation press release reports (7/11). Donors "pledged $2.6 billion over the next eight years at [the summit], in what was described as a breakthrough for the world's poorest women and girls," the Guardian writes, adding, "More than 20 developing countries made commitments to boost spending on family planning and to strengthen women's rights to ease their access to contraception" (Tran, 7/11). Speaking at the summit, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, announced the foundation "will spend more than $1 billion over the next eight years to increase access to contraceptives in the developing world and research new methods of birth control" and "outlined several of the initiatives [the foundation] will focus on in the coming years, including efforts to bring down the cost of birth control so that it will be within reach of the world's poorest women," the Seattle Times notes (Doughton, 7/11).