The ability to decide freely the number, spacing and timing of children is a fundamental human right with proven benefits for the health of women and children. Reducing global unmet need for contraception would prevent around 30% of maternal deaths, reduce child mortality by up to 20%, and avert 36 million years of healthy life lost each year. Additionally, family planning contributes to universal education, women’s empowerment, prevention of HIV, poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability, making it one of the most cost-effective global health and development interventions. Despite these imperatives, progress towards universal access to family planning in the Pacific has been slow and inequitable. Many countries in this region report prevalence rates of modern methods of contraception well below the global average of 56% for less developed countries, and unmet need is among the highest in the world: between 8% and 46% of married women want to avoid pregnancy but are not using any method of family planning. In some settings, more than half of all births are unintended, and as many as one in four adolescent girls have commenced childbearing.
Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands are made up of more than 1000 islands and are among the poorest in the Pacific. Less than 40% of women aged 15–49 use any method of family planning and between 11 and 30% have an unmet need for contraception. Fertility rates remain above 4 and, with annual population growth rates over 2.3%, they will account for much of the expected population growth in the region.
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