WHO (World Health Organization)- Topic Synopsis Preventing Unsafe Abortions

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1 WHO (World Health Organization)- Topic Synopsis Preventing Unsafe Abortions Hello! My name is Paul Rodriguez-Anter, I am your Head Chair, and this is my fourth year in Model United NAtions. I am a Senior at Capistrano Valley High School who is passionate about making a difference in our world and debating pressing global topics and finding solutions for the greater good. I am very involved at my school. I am apart of the Surf Team at Capo and am in ASB as Senior Class President. I am apart of California Scholarship Federation, National Honor Society, and two clubs that I founded- REFUGE and Young at Heart. REFUGE was created to help aid the Syrian Refugees that are displaced all throughout the United States. I had the special opportunity to work at a refugee camp in Greece this summer and learn all about the Syrian Civil War crisis. Heart club is a club where students visit retirement homes and spend time with the elderly. In my community I am also involved. I was fortunate enough to have received my Eagle Scout rank this past April. I can easily say that in everything that I am involved at Capo and in my community, Model United Nations has helped shape who I am, helped me become an effective public speaker, and helped me find who I want to be and what I want to do with my life. I look forward to the conference we have ahead and to meeting all of you! Background: Preventing Unsafe Abortions Abortions are safe if they are done with a method recommended by WHO that is appropriate to the pregnancy duration and if the person providing or supporting the abortion is trained. Such abortions can be done using tablets (medical abortion) or a simple outpatient procedure. Unsafe abortion occurs when a pregnancy is terminated either by people lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimal medical standards. The people, skills and medical standards considered safe in the provision of induced abortions are different for medical abortion (which is performed with drugs alone), and surgical abortion (which is performed with a manual or electric equipment). Skills and medical standards required for a safe abortion also vary depending upon the duration of the pregnancy and evolving scientific advances. They are less safe, when done using outdated methods like sharp curettage even if the provider is trained or if women using tablets do not have access to proper information or to a trained person if they need help. Abortions are dangerous or least safe when they involve ingestion of caustic substances or untrained persons use dangerous methods such as insertion of foreign bodies, or use of traditional concoctions.

2 Women get abortions for a number of reasons- unstable parent, low income, child disability, fatal pregnancy, unplanned, due to rape, not capable to raise a child, alone, health issues etc. The issue is not stopping them from getting abortions, but from getting unsafe abortions that can result in the death of more than just the unborn child. Each year between 4.7% 13.2% of maternal deaths can be attributed to unsafe abortion. Around 7 million women are admitted to hospitals every year in developing countries, as a result of unsafe abortion. There are approximately 25 million unsafe abortions annually. Of these one third or approximately 8 million were performed under the least safe conditions by untrained persons using dangerous and invasive methods. Unsafe abortions lead to an estimated 7 million complications. Any woman with an unwanted pregnancy who cannot access safe abortion is at risk of unsafe abortion. Women living in low-income countries and poor women are more likely to have an unsafe abortion. Deaths and injuries are higher when unsafe abortion is performed later in pregnancy. The rate of unsafe abortions is higher where access to effective contraception and safe abortion is limited or unavailable. Following unsafe abortion, women may experience a range of harms that affect their quality of life and well-being, with some women experiencing life-threatening complications. The major life-threatening complications resulting from the least safe abortions are haemorrhage, infection, and injury to the genital tract and internal organs. Unsafe abortions when performed under least safe conditions can lead to fatal complications. Women, including adolescents, with unwanted pregnancies often resort to unsafe abortion when they cannot access safe abortion. Barriers to accessing safe abortion include: restrictive laws, poor availability of services, high cost, stigma, conscientious objection of health-care providers and, unnecessary requirements. In addition to the deaths and disabilities caused by unsafe abortion, there are major social and financial costs to women, families, communities, and health systems. In 2006, it was estimated that $553 million was spent treating serious consequences of unsafe abortions. Possible Solutions: One possible solution is to enforce health care providers to be more involved with pregnancy/abortion status. Health-care providers are obligated to provide life-saving medical care to any woman who suffers abortion-related complications, including treatment of complications from unsafe abortion, regardless of the legal grounds for abortion. However, in

3 some cases, treatment of abortion complications is administered only on the condition that the woman provides information about the people who performed the illegal abortion. Another solution would be to regulate laws against women having abortions at all. Although this solution does cover the effects of unsafe abortions occurring, it also opens up a whole new door of issues for women who do not wish to bare children. Some would say that restricting abortions would only cause women to want to be more defiant in dire situations of wanting to get rid of their unborn child. Others would mention how it would help regulate unsafe abortions and that there would be a sae system with the country's government. Another great solution that contradicts the last one is the idea of providing more available and free abortion clinics throughout developing countries and developed countries. This will allow women who wish to receive an abortion the option to go to a safe affordable, trained doctor who can provide the necessary actions to abort the child. UN Involvement: WHO provides global technical and policy guidance on the use of contraception to prevent unintended pregnancy, safe abortion, and treatment of complications from unsafe abortion. In 2012, WHO published updated technical and policy guidance on safe abortion. Who came up with an interactive online database containing comprehensive information on the abortion laws, policies, health standards and guidelines for all countries. Handbooks have become more and more available and are being sent out to developing countries to help educate women on the crisis of unsafe abortions. WHO provides technical support to countries to adapt sexual and reproductive health guidelines to specific contexts and strengthen national policies and programmes related to contraception and safe abortion care. WHO is a cosponsor of the UNDP/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction, which carries out research on clinical care as well as implementation research on community and health systems approaches to preventing unsafe abortion. It also monitors the global burden of unsafe abortion and its consequences. Questions to Consider:

4 1. What can your country do to help prevent unsafe abortions and how can you encourage women to receive safe abortions? 2. How might your country s policies align with unsafe abortions? 3. Does your country has a law against abortions? If so how can you help service mothers who are at risk of losing their lives and wish to abort their unborn child to save their life? 4. What countries can help your country's financial situation (if help is needed) to raise funds on implementing safer abortion doctors? 5. How might your country work to train professionals how to properly abort a baby? 6. How can your country regulate unlicensed doctors who are conducting unsafe abortions in unsafe areas? Topic 2: Alcohol Abuse Background: Alcohol can be abused as early as ages 10 around the world. People who drink before the age of 15 are four times more likely to meet the criteria for alcohol dependence at some point in their lives. This statistic is staggering, and outlines the root cause of substance abuse and dependence that many people live their lives with on a daily basis. The legal drinking age in most countries around the world is 18, which has the potential to endanger the younger adolescents by having easier access to alcohol. Complex behaviors, such as the decision to begin drinking or to continue using alcohol, are the result of a dynamic interplay between genes and environment. For example, biological and physiological changes that occur during adolescence may promote risk-taking behavior, leading to early experimentation with alcohol. This behavior then shapes the child s environment, as he or she chooses friends and situations that support further drinking. Continued drinking may lead to physiological reactions, such as depression or anxiety disorders, triggering even greater alcohol use or dependence. In this way, youthful patterns of alcohol use can mark the start of a developmental pathway that may lead to abuse and dependence. Other research shows that the younger children and adolescents are when they start to drink, the more likely they will be to engage in behaviors that harm themselves and others. For example, frequent binge drinkers (nearly 1 million high school students nationwide) are more likely to engage in risky behaviors, including using

5 other drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, having sex with six or more partners, and earning grades that are mostly Ds and Fs in school. Alcohol intake in the WHO European Region is the highest in the world. The harmful use of alcohol is related to premature death and avoidable disease and is a major avoidable risk factor for neuropsychiatric disorders, cardiovascular diseases, cirrhosis of the liver and cancer. It is associated with several infectious diseases and contributes significantly to unintentional and intentional injuries. Further, excessive alcohol use during a woman s pregnancy can lead to the formation of a severe mental handicap of her child. This is a nationwide issue that needs to be addressed and dealt with properly. Possible Solutions: Many possible solutions stem from the fact that people should begin drinking in their later years as opposed to their teenage ones. It begins at the family level, where the guardians of the child have the ability to change the environment to an alcohol-free one. Parents ability to influence whether their children drink is well documented and is consistent across racial/ethnic groups. Setting clear rules against drinking, consistently enforcing those rules, and monitoring the child s behavior all help to reduce the likelihood of underage drinking. The Iowa Strengthening Families Program (ISFP), delivered when students were in grade 6, is a program that has shown long-lasting preventive effects on alcohol use. Another possible solution would be to raise awareness at the public-school level. The first school-based prevention programs were primarily informational and often used scare tactics; it was assumed that if youth understood the dangers of alcohol use, they would choose not to drink. These programs were ineffective. Today, better programs are available and often have a number of elements in common: They follow social influence models and include setting norms, addressing social pressures to drink, and teaching resistance skills. These programs also offer interactive and developmentally appropriate information, include peer-led components, and provide teacher training The final solution would be to raise the minimum drinking age from 18 to 21. Increasing the age at which people can legally purchase and drink alcohol has been the most successful intervention to date in reducing drinking and alcohol-related crashes among people under age 21. It is estimated that a legal drinking age of 21 saves 700 to 1,000 lives annually. Since 1976, these

6 laws have prevented more than 21,000 traffic deaths. Just how much the legal drinking age relates to drinking-related crashes is shown by a recent study in New Zealand. Six years ago that country lowered its minimum legal drinking age to 18. Since then, alcohol-related crashes have risen 12 percent among 18- to 19-year-olds and 14 percent among 15- to 17-year-olds. Clearly a higher minimum drinking age can help to reduce crashes and save lives, especially in very young drivers. U.N. Involvement The World Health Organization has pushed policy though the United Nations in an effort to reduce worldwide alcohol abuse in relation to public health on a large scale. Overall, 66 of WHO s Member States had written national alcohol policies in The proportion of countries with written national alcohol policies varies across regions from 20% of reporting countries in the WHO African Region to 64% of reporting countries in the WHO European Region. Of the 66 countries with national policies, 30 have adopted these policies formally through the national government, 18 through the national parliament, 13 through a specific ministry and five through another national body. Most commonly (in 51 countries), the national alcohol policies have been integrated into a written substance abuse policy. Sixty-two countries described their national alcohol policy as multisectoral, most frequently including the health, transport and/or road safety, education, and law enforcement sectors. Of the countries with national alcohol policies, 44 reported that health sectors had the main coordinating responsibility. Questions to Consider: 1. What can your country do to prevent alcohol abuse from happening? 2. How can you encourage and incentivize the younger generation away from binge drinking? 3. What is the minimum drinking limit in your country? Do you think that it should be raised? 4. How might your country implement social policy in order to change the national mindset on binge drinking? 5. How many people die from drunk driving in your country every year? How might you decrease this statistic?

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