ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a broad profile of maternal health in the region, using nationally representative data available from five countries: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. Nearly 80 percent of females in the Middle East reportedly reach grade 5 in school, one of the highest rates of all world regions. The book provides a first glimpse of the family planning and reproductive health situation in urban Lebanon, specifically among a sample of 504 ever-married women who were first-time visitors to a large, modern family planning clinic in the Sabra area of Beirut. It describes the case of mobile family planning units in Tunisia with a more rigorous treatment of cost-effectiveness. The book examines infertility, an often overlooked component of family planning. Infertility is equated with sterility, which is the inability to produce a live birth.
