The focus of the 2008 conference was on meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals related to women's sexual and reproductive health. Panels, discussions and lectures explored ways to prevent unsafe abortion, improve maternal health, promote access to contraception, reduce sexual violence, implement comprehensive sex education programs and improve women’s access to health services.

Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #5 calls on nations to reduce maternal mortality by 75 percent.  Unsafe abortion causes 11 percent of maternal mortality in Latin America.  With access to appropriate health-care, deaths and injuries from unsafe abortion would be entirely preventable, and countries would be much closer to meeting this MDG.  Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Guttmacher Institute show that while the number of abortions performed globally has fallen slightly in recent years, the number of unsafe abortions has increased.

In his presentation, Congress President Dr. Leonel Briozzo demonstrated one approach for improving women’s health. Uruguay’s Iniciativas Sanitarias, led by Briozzo, introduced a new health-care model in Montevideo’s Pereira Rossell Hospital in 2004 to reduce deaths and injuries from unsafe abortion. Abortion in Uruguay is highly restricted, and so women are unlikely to know about or pursue the few legal avenues for ending an unwanted pregnancy. Additionally, doctors have traditionally neglected to provide women with information about their options, instead opting to make decisions for them. The Iniciativas Sanitarias model provides pregnant women with health examinations, counseling and, for women who do not want have a child at that time, information about all of their options, including adoption and the use of misoprostol. Misoprostol is a drug which is legally available by prescription in most of Latin America; one of its uses can be to provide medication abortion. In 2006, the Iniciativas Sanitarias model was expanded to the national health system, and other countries in Latin America are considering adopting similar models.

In addition to Briozzo, speakers from 10 Latin American countries made technical and practical presentations.   

Dr. Rafaela Schiavon, Ipas country director for Mexico, spoke about how Mexico City could be a model for other countries or areas that wanted to ease restrictions on abortion and expand overall access to health care. In April 2007, the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District of Mexico City passed landmark legislation to decriminalize abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. 

Schiavon said the law has been successful in improving women’s health in large part because services were available through the public-health system almost immediately after the law went into effect.  “I believe that Mexico is a country that we should continue observing, analyzing and studying, because, with the law, there was a clear, strong demand for public services, and the public health services responded to this demand,” said Schiavon.

In his address to the Congress, Briozzo reinforced the importance of finding new and better ways to meet the needs of women. “The central theme of this congress is sexual and reproductive health, with a perspective of integrating human rights into the development of the Millennium Development Goals, starting with the premise that doctors and health professionals should be part of the solution and not part of the problem,” said Briozzo.