In the fourth Latin American Congress on Health and Sexual and Reproductive Rights, held from 10 to 12 April in Montevideo, Uruguay, health professionals, activists and government officials from the Americas gathered to share their experiences and to appeal to a greater commitment to improving the health of women throughout the region.

The 2008 conference focused on meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals related to sexual and reproductive health of women. In panels, discussions and presentations explored the ways to avoid unsafe abortion, improving maternal health, promoting access to birth control contraceptives, decrease sexual violence, sexual education programs to establish holistic and improving access to women health services.

Development Goal 5 (MDG) calls on nations to reduce maternal mortality by 75 percent. Unsafe abortion causes 11 percent of maternal mortality in Latin America. If women had access to adequate health services, deaths and injuries attributable to unsafe abortion would be entirely preventable, and countries could meet this OD M. Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Guttmacher Institute show that while the number of abortions performed worldwide has decreased slightly in recent years, the number of unsafe abortions has increased.

In his speech, the president of the congress, Dr. Lionel Briozzo, showed that a strategy to improve the health of women is through the Health Initiatives of Uruguay, a model launched in the Pereira Rossell Hospital in Montevideo in 2001, as a way of reducing deaths and injury rates attributable to unsafe abortion. In Uruguay, abortion is very restricted, therefore, it is unlikely that women know or find the few legal means to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. In addition, doctors generally do not provide women with information about your options, but choose to make decisions for them. Health Initiatives are provided to pregnant women physical exams, counseling and, for women who do not want a child at the time, information about all your options, including the adoption and use of misoprostol. Misoprostol is a drug that is legally available by prescription in much of Latin America, one of its uses is to make medical abortion. In 2006, Health Initiatives was extended to the national health system, and other Latin American countries are considering adopting similar models.

Briozzo addition, speakers from 10 Latin American countries gave technical and practical presentations.

Dr Rafaela Schiavon, Director of Ipas Mexico, spoke about how the City of Mexico could be a model for other countries or regions where you want to relax restrictions on abortion and expand access to health services in general. In April 2007, the Federal District Legislative Assembly passed landmark legislation to legalize abortion last you the first trimester of pregnancy.

Schiavon said the law has improved the health of women, mainly because the public health system began providing services almost immediately after the law went into effect. “I believe that Mexico is a country that we continue observing, analyzing and studying, because, with the law, was a great demand for public services and public health services responded to this demand,” said Schiavon.

In his speech to Congress, Briozzo stressed the importance of finding new and better ways to meet the needs of women. “The central theme of this congress is the sexual and reproductive health, in terms of integrating human rights into development of the Millennium Development Goals, beginning with the premise that doctors and other health professionals should be part of the solution and not part of the problem, “said Briozzo.

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