Pfizer to offer affordable contraception to sub-Saharan Africa

Pfizer has announced plans to work with a number of international organisations, including the UK's Department for International Development, the US Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve sub-Saharan Africa's access to contraception.

The partners plan to reach approximately three million women in the area with up to 12 million doses of an affordable injected contraceptive between 2013 and 2016.

Speaking at the London Summit on Family Planning, Pfizer's country lead for Nigeria and the east African regions Enrico Liggeri expressed the company's commitment to "increasing access in developing countries to its portfolio of reproductive health products".

Senegal and Nigeria are two of the countries that have expressed an initial interest in taking part in the scheme.

"While the industry can take the lead in developing products suited to the needs of the market", private-public partnerships are crucial in ensuring the viability of disseminating these devices, concluded Mr Liggeri.

Contraception is widely seen as a crucial issue in sub-Saharan Africa's development, with Nafis Sadik, former head of the UN Population Fund, describing it as "the freedom from which all other freedoms flow".