About us
Marie Stopes International is a not-for-profit sexual and reproductive health (SRH) organisation that uses modern business methods to achieve the social goal of preventing unintended pregnancies and unplanned births in 43 countries worldwide. Marie Stopes International delivers state-of-the-art programmes in: family planning; safe abortion (including post abortion care); maternal & child health; and HIV/STIs, including male circumcision.
In 2008 alone, Marie Stopes International:
- added 96 new clinics to its existing network of 464 clinics (bringing the total to 560), and thousands of outreach sites that serve rural, hard-to-reach communities
- increased condom sales by 10% to 143 million
- provided 470,000 safe abortions from its network of clinics, a 29% increase on 2007 and MSI's largest yearly increase ever
- increased the number of IUDs fitted by 41% to 502,000
- opened new programmes in Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria and Zambia
As a result of its work, in 2008 Marie Stopes International prevented:
- 1.9 million unsafe abortions
- 7 million unwanted pregnancies
- 5 million unintended births
- 389,000 under-five mortalities, which equates to reducing the global number of under-five mortalities by 5.3%
- 277,000 infant mortalities
- 27,000 maternal mortalities, out of a total of 366,000 maternal mortalities in the countries in which MSI operates, or 6.6% reduction
Today, Marie Stopes International is scaling-up both the quality and coverage of sexual and reproductive health services for low-income women and couples in developing countries in order to:
- eradicate unsafe abortion by rapidly expanding access to comprehensive SRH services, including safe abortion
- revolutionise SRH service delivery by providing global technical leadership in family planning and safe abortion
- serve the underserved such as rural communities and displaced populations, rather than merely fighting for a larger share of the existing contraceptive market
- eliminate barriers to SRH supplies and services through programming and advocacy at all levels
- strengthen health systems through partnerships with governments and the non-state sector, to help them do more and do better
In 2008, MSI will launch operations in five additional countries as part of its strategy to be operational in 48 countries by the end of 2010, protecting 20 million couples per year from unplanned pregnancy and unsafe abortion.
Health programmes
Countries we work in
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