Family–planning program

The rapid growth of the world's population will decide our future. This means that all sustainability issues – improving the quality of life, environmental protection, resource availability – are intimately linked.

The United Nations clearly formulated it as early as 1994: family planning is an urgent necessity in view of the population explosion.

Contraceptives are not available in many developing countries. As a result, according to the annual report of the German Foundation for World Population (DSW), 76 million women worldwide unintentionally become pregnant every year, and more than half a million women die because of complications during pregnancy or childbirth. And unplanned children increase the risk of poverty. According to estimates by the United Nations Population Fund, about 200 million women would use family-planning methods but have no access to them or to the relevant information.

In our agreements with our cooperation partners, Bayer Schering Pharma makes sure that people from poorer countries can also access a broad range of family-planning methods. With our long-term and sustained commitment to family planning, we are making a significant contribution to ensuring that United Nations' Millennium Development Goals – empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health – are reached by 2015.

Making self-determined family planning possible at affordable prices for people and reducing infant and maternal mortality are key objectives of our engagement in the field of family planning.

As the market leader in the field of hormonal contraception, we have extensive experience and can look back on a very long tradition. Our company is active in more than 130 countries, giving people access to a wide range of family-planning methods, regardless of income.