What Are the Biggest Health Challenges in the Developing World?

What Are the Biggest Health Challenges in the Developing World? (1:08)

The lack of access to birth control in the developing world comes with a hosts of health callings, including maternal mortality. In this video, HealthMaker Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses the problem.

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The world has potentially 225 to 250 million women of reproductive age who don't have access to the kinds of contraception that we take it for granted here in our country. And that leads to a lot of maternal mortality, it leads to inadequate ability to space children to really just allow those women to control, to be able to scope or manage the size of the family they want to have.

People who really understand population demographics would say that, if we make contraception available to those women who want it, so that they can plan their families, so that they can space their children the way they would like to, you'll have a huge impact in the 30 40 year time-frame on population which will have a huge impact on the environment and climate change.