The chairman of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) has called on politicians and development organisations to set aside their hang-ups on promoting contraception methods.
Mr Niall Behan told a conference in Dublin yesterday that all politicians, policy-makers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) had a responsibility to protect the reproductive and health rights of all individuals.
"Often, because of fears of criticism from some church leaders and conservative opposition groups who are opposed to family planning, many politicians and NGOs choose not to include reproductive health on their agendas."
He said organisations which worked with those living with AIDS "must understand that access to condoms and investment in microbicides are part of the package to prevent the further spread of the global HIV/Aids epidemic".
Unless reproductive health was at the heart of development policy, "appalling statistics" on mortality and health would persist. Eleven people became infected with HIV every minute. Every minute there were 100 abortions, half of them unsafe.
Mr Behan made his comments at the opening of a European conference on reproductive health in development policy.
The conference was organised by the IFPA to mark the 10th anniversary of the UN conference on population and development in Cairo.
The Cairo conference agreed a programme of action focusing on promoting sexual and reproductive rights and access to education, which was re-affirmed at a UN conference last week in New York.
According to Mr Behan, the programme of action was "still a hot potato", and the US administration was seeking to move the emphasis away from contraception towards abstinence programmes.