President’s Message
Among the best things about being president of the Population Council is visiting our international offices and seeing firsthand the work that is being done.
Reviewing a project is always informative and often inspiring. I am constantly impressed by the energy, experience, commitment, and professional skills of my colleagues at the Council.
With a staff of 88 and an annual budget exceeding $9 million, our office in Islamabad is our largest outside the United States, and is of special interest to me and to our board of trustees because of Pakistan's fragile security situation. Several years ago when the Marriott Hotel was bombed, furniture crashed to the floor and windows shattered in the Council's office, which is 500 yards from the hotel. On many of Islamabad's larger streets, Jersey walls are set up in slalom-like fashion to slow traffic and make it easier for the police and the military to monitor travelers. The security concerns are also apparent at hotels and government offices, where visitors have to pass through metal detectors (albeit often lackadaisically managed) to enter.
Population Council president Peter Donaldson meets with Council staff members in Islamabad. From left to right, Peter Donaldson, Seemin Ashfaq, and Arshad Mahmood. In 2010, the Council's FALAH project introduced a "basic minimum family planning content" package to the faculties of community medicine, gynecology/obstetrics, and pharmacology of Chandka Medical College, Larkana and Quaid-e-Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur, and began rolling-out the curriculum to all public-sector medical institutions across Pakistan.
My colleagues seem unfazed by what I think are the serious risks they face. Many staff members have advanced degrees from foreign universities and international reputations that would allow them to find good professional employment outside of Pakistan. But they stay, committed to the work.
When I visited her office, Zeba Sathar, the Council’s country director in Pakistan, told me, “Our work never stops because of any danger. We are willing to work in the most difficult of circumstances. That applies to the staff in all the country offices, whether it's political turmoil we are facing or the heat of working on sensitive topics.”
In Pakistan one of our most influential projects, the USAID-funded Family Advancement for Life and Health (FALAH), is based on research demonstrating that short birth intervals increase maternal and child morbidity and mortality. If women in Pakistan were better able to plan their families, the reduction in maternal and child mortality would be substantial. FALAH promotes birth spacing and family planning as a means to healthier mothers and children. Between 2007 and 2010, FALAH reached 7.4 million Pakistani men and women with information about family planning and reproductive health, trained more than 22,000 family planning and reproductive health service providers, and ensured that more than 11,500 service delivery locations provide family planning counseling and services. The project has been extremely effective and influential. Pakistan's Ministry of Health has endorsed birth spacing for saving lives as a key health strategy.
Substantial changes in the bureaucratic environment and in funding have occurred in Pakistan since the start of FALAH. The government dissolved the Ministry of Population and Family Welfare, which had been the national coordinating body for population and family planning activities. The devolution of responsibilities to provincial governments, characteristic of many developing countries, has led to new partnerships with provincial departments and more requests for the Council to help local authorities gain the skills needed to implement and evaluate programs.
These changes in policy are the latest transitions that the Council has experienced in Pakistan. Our long-term perspective makes these changes easier to accept. We tackle problems that we know cannot be solved quickly, and we establish long-lasting partnerships to address difficult issues. We have worked with the government of Pakistan and with local NGOs since the 1960s, and we are committed to continuing our collaboration. In Pakistan and elsewhere, our goal is to educate ourselves, our scientific peers, the donor community, service providers, as well as local and international policymakers and program managers about consequential population, health, and development issues, and to use our technical expertise to assist local institutions in the smooth introduction of successful and sustainable programs that serve large populations.
As you read this report, you will learn about our efforts to translate research results into policies and programs with wider coverage, better quality, and greater cost-effectiveness. You will learn about Ethiopia, where we are studying ways to empower married adolescent girls; India, where we are providing the evidence needed to save women’s lives by making safe abortion more accessible; Kenya, where we are examining ways to integrate alcohol abuse reduction into HIV counseling; Guatemala, where we are strengthening social institutions to serve vulnerable girls; and Mexico, where we are learning how to overcome barriers to safe childbirth.
The work underway around the world is a remarkable testimony to the values shared by staff throughout the Council. The accountant in Cairo, the researcher at our Center for Biomedical Research, and the driver in Kenya share a common view that our work is important because the people we serve are important and because we are clearly having an enormous positive impact.
FALAH and the other projects described in this report highlight the balance we seek between generating new knowledge and applying that knowledge to guide investments of scarce resources. Respecting local cultures and conditions, the Council delivers solutions that change the way people think about policies, programs, and technologies that improve lives. The Council has been able to deliver these solutions because we’ve had the independence to pursue new ideas. Generous contributors give us the flexibility to establish trends rather than follow them. Without their help, the successful outcomes described in this report could not have taken place. We are grateful for this support and encouragement.
PETER J. DONALDSON
PRESIDENT
