The 2018 ICFP will be co-hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health with the Ministry of Health of Rwanda.
According to the event’s organizers, the fifth International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) will take place from November 12 to 15, 2018 in Kigali Convention Centre, with “Investing for a Lifetime of Returns” as the theme for the conference.
In a press statement, organizers indicated that they chose Rwanda as the host country due to the country’s achievements in the family planning sector as well as a strong commitment towards ensuring a healthy and prosperous future for the sustainable development of its people, and the world.
Rwanda is one of the family planning success stories of recent history.
The first 15 years of the 2000s saw great achievements: a dramatic rise in the country’s contraceptive prevalence rate for modern methods between 2000 and 2015, and a drop in total fertility rate from 6.1 in 2000 to 4.2 in 2015. The use of modern contraceptive methods increased from 10 percent in 2005 to 45 percent in 2010, and then rose slightly to 48 percent in 2015.
Rwanda has set ambitious goals of achieving a total fertility rate of 3.1 children per woman and 72 percent contraceptive prevalence by June 2018.
The Minister of Health, Diane Gashumba said that it is a great honor for the country to host the event adding that the Government will maintain efforts to ensure the success of the event.
“The Government of Rwanda is privileged to host the fifth International Conference on Family Planning delegates in Kigali, Rwanda, and is committed to working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute to ensure that the event is successfully hosted in the country,” she noted
The Director of the Gates Institute and Chair of the International Steering Committee of the ICFP, Jose “Oying” Rimon II, said that they are looking forward to highlight some of the spectacular gains in family planning that are occurring in many parts of Africa today.
“We are delighted to be partnering with the Rwandan Ministry of Health for the 2018 ICFP. It will be wonderful to return to Africa for the 2018 conference, and to highlight some of the spectacular gains in family planning that are occurring in many parts of Africa today, as well as the challenges that lie ahead,” he said
President Paul Kagame was one of the distinguished attendees of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, at which he joined the co-hosts, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Kingdom, along with the research and development community, in a groundbreaking promise to make affordable contraception available to an additional 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries by 2020.
Rwanda’s leadership has been highly supportive of family planning. In recent years, the country has invested in its network of community health workers (CHWs), run communications campaigns to drive demand and behavior change, and provided training on long-acting and permanent contraceptive methods.
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