Today, many family planning programs focus on providing clients good-quality reproductive health care. Good-quality care includes a range of contraceptive methods, sensitive counseling, and meeting other important reproductive health needs as well as providing family planning. Progress toward ICPD goals has been uneven, however. A 1999 study of eight countries, representing all developing regions, found that half are adopting policies that reflect the Cairo consensus, but some are facing difficulties obtaining the support needed to carry out the new policies. In 1999, after reviewing the five-year record of efforts to meet the Cairo commitments, countries endorsed the Cairo consensus again, called on developing countries to take the steps needed to improve reproductive health care and cut unmet need for family planning in half by 2005.
Population growth is still a crucial issue.
Worldwide declines in fertility rates have led some people to declare, incorrectly, that population growth is no longer a global concern. In fact, every 12 or 13 years another billion people are added to the world's population, almost all in developing countries. The 20th century is ending with more than 6 billion people on earth compared with 2.3 billion at mid-century. The world's population has doubled in a single lifetime. In some places, meeting the needs of so many people already threatens the natural resource base on which the future depends, and the situation will get worse.