Afghani Birth Control

According to this report from YLE (in Finnish,) the women of Afghanistan can now utilize family planning services. This includes advice, high quality information, birth control methods and training for local religious leaders. This helps improve attitudes and prevent unwanted pregnancies. Nothing wrong with this.

But, according to the report, Finland is the only outside funding country. This is what made me look for more background information. The big questions were why only one donor instead of multinational support, and why only Finland. The website of the organization in question, Marie Stopes International, provided me with a basic profile on Afghanistan and a release about the work in question.

The release, Making a Difference in Afghanistan provides confirmation for the numbers used in the YLE report and some extra information. Currently there are 15 clinics and 2 mobile units, with 52 community health workers in Afghanistan. For a nation with the highest maternal death rate in the world, this is a valuable service.

But then, as usual, we run in to problems. First of all, while less efficient, MSI offered valuable services already in 2003, not mentioned in the news. That's not the big problem however, which is that in the Afghanistan overview MSI reports they have 4 major donors: "Government of Finland; Direct Relief International; Jersey Overseas Aid Commission; Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA)."

This is a problem in that YLE reported Finland as the only funder, but MSI reports Finland is working together with MSI, mentioning nothing of exclusivity. It's frustrating that YLE has no source available, no link to a press release or any lead to follow up on besides the organization's name, which provides contradicting information.

I hope the point of the report wasn't as much comment on how great Finland is than to bring up the current situation in Afghanistan, as for the latter the inconsistency doesn't detract from the article. But if YLE simply wanted to write a "go us" story they could've been more honest going about it.