“I will never allow my daughter to review what happened to me,” she told UNFPA, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency.

What happens when conflicts displace tens of thousands of people in hotspots like Nigeria, the Democratic Republic Congo (DRC) and Ukraine, and women die every day in birth or pregnancy?

UNFPA is there, equipped shear camps and medical staff with life -saving supplies.

When an earthquake tumbles entire city blocks, it puts contraception on relief convoys along with sets to deliver babies and medications to stop internal bleeding.

When a cyclone cuts through remote island communities, the Agency sends birth control, as well as sends sterile medical devices, including condoms, oral and injectable birth control, contraception implants and intrauterine devices (IUDs).

Why? Because contraception is part of life -saving humanitarian care.

This may be contradictory to some, but it is a definite fact in the eyes of medical science, humanitarian respondents and women themselves.

Even outside of emergency settings, having access to modern, ensuring contraception, women to make their own decisions about their fertility, which in turn reduces unintended pregnancies and uncertain abortions, improves health results and lowers the risk of mothers and child mortality.

In short, family planning saves millions of lives. Here are some of the reasons for:

Getting pregnant does not stop in emergency settings

More than 60 percent of all maternity deaths are estimated to take place in humanitarian crises and fragile surroundings, places where women are struggling to access the care and nutrition needed to carry a pregnancy.

Even under the best circumstances, alarming proportions of women are unable to say no to sex, about a quarter of women, according to the latest data.

In a humanitarian crisis, women experience about twice as much as gender -based violence as well as the increased risk of rape such as a weapon of war and genocide and the increased risk of intimate partner violence. All of this raises their vulnerability to an unintended pregnancy.

Prevention of mortal complications

While contraception is sometimes criticized – wrong – like a new medicine, one that is unnatural or poorly understood, the truth is that they have existed for millennia. Condoms, for example, have been used for centuries.

When it comes to modern forms of birth control, they are among the most prescribed and well -studied medications that exist. Preventure funds have been examined not only by pharmacologists and medical researchers, but also by health economists, epidemiologists and decision makers, and the results are crucial: by preventing unintentional pregnancy preventing contraception women from dying.

How? Each pregnancy has a risk, and pregnancies in crisis settings where health systems are in taters and medical treatment button are especially dangerous.

Life -saving help because babies don’t wait

What happens when a woman is ready to give birth after a hurricane or in a war zone?

In the crisis-added DRC, a collapse of the health infrastructure has led maternity mortality to hover, with three women who die every hour from pregnancy or birth complications.

“Many women in northwestern Syria lose their lives while being transferred between hospitals in the absence of significant supplies to critical conditions,” Dr. Ikram Haboush in Idlib.

Unintended pregnancies are also directly correlated with higher maternal mortality.

“Therefore, any public health program that is designed to reduce the number of maternal deaths, contraception as one of the pillars of actions,” according to the experts who wrote UNFPA’s annual publication, the state of the world’s population report and sees the invisible: the case of action in it neglected crisis of unintended pregnancy.

By preventing unintended pregnancy, contraception also reduces the incidence of mother injuries and illness, stillbirth and neonatal death.

By 2023, UNFPA acquired the dedicated $ 136 million -dollar supply party of birth control, which is estimated to have prevented nearly 10 million unintended pregnancies and over 200,000 maternal and newborn deaths. It is estimated that these contraception also prevented nearly three million uncertain abortions.

Two community workers provide information on contraception in Bihar, India.

Prevention of fatal illness, chronic disorders

Furthermore, prevents such as male and female condoms save lives by reducing the chances of having sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV.

Even a treatable path can be life -threatening in environment with limited access to medical treatment, as is the case for women and girls in Haiti, for example, where widespread and gracious sexual violence has led to rising rates of accidental pregnancy as well as paths, While the health system is all intertwined.

Only about three percent of Haiti survivors report that he is receiving treatment after rape within 72 hours after they were assaulted. This treatment includes emergency prevention to prevent pregnancy and prophylaxis after exposure to prevent HIV transmission.

Preventure also treat disorders that are not related to sexual activity that is debilitating during even stable and safe circumstances such as polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, dysmenorrhea and extremely heavy bleeding.

For women like Omaira Opikuko from Venezuela, there is no doubt that long -term birth control after her sixth delivery was life -saving.

She suffered both bleeding and a scattered uterus during her last labor.

“I was on the verge of death,” she said.

Two Thai peer educators High School students describe a number of available condoms.

Cost -effective humanitarian interventions

Family planning is cost -effective.

By 2023, more than 50 countries receiving UNFPA contraception made collective savings of over $ 700 million through reduced health costs for pregnancy, birth and care after abortion.

Numerous studies have shown that family planning is a critical investment for society, not only by averting unintentional pregnancy and the mother’s health problems that accompany it, but also by increasing educational and employment gains among women.

In humanitarian environment, contraceptives are all the more critical, which helps women and families survive and stabilize and leave them better prepared to recover.

Nobody knows this better than survivors of humanitarian crises themselves

“There is a lot of demand for family planning services,” said an emergency in the immediate demand for a deadly cyclone.

In the midst of the world’s growing precarity, rising disasters and rising shifts, these services are a light in the dark for women and girls all over the world.

As Mrs. Opikuko in Venezuela said, “I won’t be afraid anymore.”

Learn more about UNFPA here.