Updates

By: Joanna Hoffman, Special Projects Manager 

The long-term decline of abortions worldwide has stalled, and unsafe abortions are now on the rise, according to Induced Abortion: Incidence and Trends Worldwide from 1995 to 2008, a report by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization (WHO) published yesterday by The Lancet. After a global decline in abortion rates from 35 per 1000 women in 1995 to 28 in 2008, progress has now stagnated.  The proportion of unsafe abortions out of total abortions has risen from 44% in 1995 to 49% in 2008. Read more...

By: Melinda French Gates
Originally posted by: the Impatient Optimists

Melinda Gates and Nick Kristof recently returned from a three-day trip to Bangladesh. She, along with Nick, agreed to answer readers’ questions about development issues in that part of the world. Here is the third and final installment. 

ELAINE HARRIS: Presumably Melinda is visiting Bangladesh to ascertain the needs specifically related to women and children and ultimately providing assistance. What an amazing position to be in. How will the needs be evaluated? How will the women and children of Bangladesh be involved in the solution? Thank you both for engaging in these humanitarian efforts. Read more...

By: Lindsey Taylor Wood, Communications Associate 

Zubaida Bai’s relationship with postpartum infection is a personal one. As a consequence of unsanitary birthing conditions and practices, she contracted an infection that led to years of suffering. Rather than allow her misfortune to deter her work, the engineer turned social entrepreneur shifted her time and energy toward developing a clean delivery birthing kit that could help prevent the deaths of the nearly 600,000 women and nine million infants that lose their lives to postpartum infection each year. Read more...