“Burundi has made significant progress in gaining access to sexual and reproductive health,” said Richmond Tiemoko, UNFPA representative in Burundi when presenting the annual report on the situation of the world population on May 15.
According to reports produced by UNFPA in six years, Burundi maternal mortality rate has dropped from 500 to 334 deaths per 100,000 births from 2010 to 2016. “A progress of almost 40% was achieved,” says Timoko.
Advances were also made in access to the family planning method. “Burundi has moved from 18% in the early 1990s to 27% in 2016 ,” he says, adding that almost one out of three women who want to limit births do not have access to the family planning method while 3% of Burundian girls enter into early marriages.
Tiemoko says, however, that there is still a lot to be done since the UNFPA goal is to reduce to zero the maternal mortality rate, lack of access to the family planning method and gender-based violence. He also regrets that 5,000 cases of obstetric fistula have been reported. “We estimate between 500 and 600 obstetric fistula cases every year,” he says.
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