Noting the landmark conferences in 1974, 1984, and 1994 addressing population issues and family planning services, Allan
Rosenfield, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, asserts that we have seen "major changes in the approach
and understanding of population and development issues over the last 30 years." The conference at Cairo was unique in part because it
changed the dynamic of the discussion of women's rights, including access to family planning services, gender equity, and the
empowerment of women.
On the topic of maternal mortality, Rosenfield finds it "particularly tragic that well over half a million women die
each year from complications of pregnancy, and the vast majority of those deaths are preventable." Although we are not able to prevent
or predict complications, we can prevent the deaths with existing medical technology. At Columbia University, there is now a program
funded by the Gates Foundation called Averting Maternal Death and Disability, and it has "built human rights as a core central point in
that all women should have the right to access to maternity care services."
Rosenfield then shifts the topic to the "global tragedy of our age, and maybe of all ages. . . the HIV/AIDS pandemic."
He provides shocking statistics: estimating that forty-two million people worldwide are HIV positive (over thirty million in sub-Saharan
Africa alone), and there are five million new cases and three million deaths every year. More precisely, there are fourteen thousand new
cases of AIDS every day (fifty percept affecting people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four). Rosenfield stresses the importance
of "prevention plus care and treatment, plus research. All are equally important, all must be stressed, and not one at the expense of others."
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