Over the past two decades, striking progress has been achieved in making pregnancy and childbirth safer in developing countries. However, a report issued by the Guttmacher Institute and the United Nations Population Fund finds a staggering lack of basic sexual and reproductive health services in developing countries. The report, Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Reproductive Health Services 2014, documents current levels of unmet need for modern contraception and basic maternal and newborn care and the negative consequences of that. The report calculates the cost of providing these services and the dramatic reductions in maternal and newborn deaths and in mother-to-child transmission of HIV that would result.

In this recording of a webinar, Jacqueline E. Darroch, co-author of the report and senior fellow at the Guttmacher Institute; and Sneha Barot, senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, presented findings from the report and their policy and programmatic implications. Their discussion was followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers.

This webinar is provided by PRB’s Center for Public Information on Population Research, with funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.