Australia has committed to doubling its aid for family planning to $53 million by 2016 at the London Family Planning Summit held on World Population Day 2012.

The Summit was hosted by the UK Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with UNFPA and other partners, to mobilise global political and financial support for the rights of women and girls in the world’s poorest countries to access contraception by 2020.

Donors pledged $2.6 billion over the next eight years to reach 120 million more women and adolescent girls with family planning services.

To coincide with the London Summit, a breakfast briefing was held in Sydney which Burnet’s Professor Mike Toole, Head of the Centre for International Health, attended.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Melinda Gates have co-authored a comment in The Lancet reiterating Australia’s commitment to the Alliance for Reproductive, Maternal and Newborn Health.

The Burnet Institute has recently undertaken studies to identify the costs and benefits of reducing unmet need for family planning in the Pacific and explored strategies to improve access to reproductive health for adolescents in East Asia and the Pacific. Download a copy.

You can follow the London Summit on twitter #FPSummit