Reproductive failure as a health priority in the Third World: a review

Family planning is synonymous with contraception in most third world countries, even though--in a great number of these countries--infertility, foetal death and child loss together constitute an important public health problem resulting in a high prevalence of childlessness. In underdeveloped countries much less attention has been paid to reproductive failures than in contraceptive failure and a highly biased approach towards "population control" has dominated. It is argued that childlessness represents a neglected aspect of family planning and that narrow-minded and goal-oriented population control is likely to be unsuccessful if it does not take into account all determinants of human reproductive failure.