Costing Cairo

Abstract

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, produced a Programme of Action accepted and signed by over 180 governments. The Programme of Action marked an important shift in the ideological framework of population programs. By stating such programs should ensure that “a full-range of reproductive health care services, including family planning, are accessible, affordable, acceptable and convenient to all users” (ICPD Programme of Action, 1994, 7.5.a), Cairo identified the crux of population programs to be the reproductive health of women, and expanded the notion of family planning accordingly. This bibliography was initiated as part of an effort to revise the original UNFPA estimates of the cost of implementing the Cairo agenda. It is focused on sub-Saharan Africa for two reasons. First, sub-Saharan Africa, by almost any measure, is most in need of improved provision of health services. Second, accuracy and completeness was a high priority, requiring that the scope be narrowed. Every effort was made to include all relevant literature published in developing countries or unpublished sources. It is primarily focused on recent literature, as the objective is to facilitate estimation of current and future implementation costs. When little or no cost estimates in sub-Saharan Africa are available, such as for breast cancer screening and treatment, we include cost estimates from outside the region. Within each topic references are organized in order (subjectively) of usefulness and quality. Each reference gives a description of points of the study relevant to the cost figures to the extent that the study presents itself. We briefly describe the methodology, including any information provided on which costs were included or not included. The costs presented are typically unit costs, where the units are most often per CYP, per capita, per illness and per affected individual. When additional calculations were necessary to produce unit costs, the additional figures used in the calculations are also presented. We provide the year-basis for the cost figures where possible and the exchange rate used where necessary. When the precise year-basis information was not available or was ambiguous in the source material we attempted provide the dates for the period of the intervention as available to offer some context for the cost data. We occasionally included dates in other references as well to offer addition context as necessary.