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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Simpler contraceptive gets Gates backing

Sandi Doughton Seattle Times

SEATTLE – As part of its $1 billion effort to make contraceptives more accessible to women in the developing world, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is joining with a pharmaceutical company and other aid groups to produce and distribute a simpler version of an old drug.

The injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera has long been a favorite of women in Africa and Asia. But getting the shots can require a lengthy journey to a clinic or hospital where a skilled health worker must draw the drug into a syringe and inject it deep into a muscle.

In its new incarnation, called Sayana Press, the drug is packaged in a syringe that consists of a plastic bubble attached to a needle. Administering the drug requires only a shallow jab and a squeeze of the bubble – a process so easy it can be done by minimally trained workers in villages and even in women’s homes.

“The real genius of this product is that it’s so simple,” said Michael Anderson, CEO of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, or CIFF, a U.K.-based philanthropy.

The Gates Foundation, CIFF and other groups will subsidize production of Sayana Press by the drug company Pfizer, which has agreed to sell it to governments and groups like the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, for $1 per three-month dose.

The drug will then be made available to women in 69 of the world’s poorest countries at little or no cost, a Gates Foundation spokeswoman said.

Melinda Gates, wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, made family planning one of the Gates Foundation’s highest priorities in 2012.

With funding from the Gates Foundation and others, Seattle nonprofit PATH is overseeing a pilot project to introduce Sayana Press in the African nations of Niger, Burkina Faso, Uganda and Senegal.

In Burkina Faso, where the pilot started, nearly 6,000 women opted to try Sayana Press, said Jennifer Drake, PATH’s assistant project director. In some rural districts, up to 75 percent of those women were using contraceptives for the first time.

“Many women in rural areas face obstacles to accessing family planning, because they have to walk to health clinics,” Drake said.

Sayana Press is not licensed for use in the United States.