Advocates for Youth, an organization focused on helping young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health, has kick-started their “Time is Now” campaign. It was developed in collaboration with a youth advisory board of 40 young people from around the world, and revolves around changes for greater inclusion of gender and youth in the upcoming Rio+20 summit. Read more...
Updates
Rwanda: MPs Agree On Abortion
April 10th, 2012
By: James Karuhanga; Originally posted on allAfrica.com
Members of the Chamber of Deputies, yesterday, passed the draft Penal Code, with the majority voting in favour of an article that permits abortion under special circumstances.
The critical vote came after the House received and approved a report of an earlier established joint Chamber of deputies-Senate committee to review the bill.
Seven women MPs abstained from voting for or against Article 165, which absolves criminal liability for exceptional abortion cases, arguing it was hazardous to the Rwandan society. Read more...
Op-Ed: Family Planning - a Force for Good Across Africa
April 10th, 2012
By: Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Originally posted in The Independent (Uganda)
Last year, I visited a mother's group in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi to learn more about family planning in Africa. At the end of our conversation, a woman named Mary Ann told me something I'll never forget. She said she plans her family because she wants to "bring every good thing" to one child before she has another.
That desire to bring every good thing to our children must be universal, because it is also why my husband and I planned our family. We have three children, and we spaced them three years apart so we could give each one the attention they deserved. One billion people around the world use contraception for the very same reason. Read more...
Celebrate Solutions: Mobile Technology Joins the Fight Against Fistula
April 9th, 2012
By: Joanna Hoffman, Women Deliver
For the estimated 3,700 Tanzanian women who experience obstetric fistula each year, a daunting landscape of stigma and shame looms before them. Many are exiled from their families and communities, and are unable to work. Only about 1,000 of them will receive treatment. The rest are either unaware that treatment exists or can’t afford to access it.
This issue led Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT), the country’s largest provider of fistula repair surgery, to take action. CCBRT already provides services free of charge, yet the barrier of transportation costs remained. In response, in 2009 they began using Vodaphone’s mobile banking system M-PESA—M for “mobile” and PESA for “money” in Swahili—to reduce the burden of transportation expenses. Read more...
Healthy Mother, Healthy Newborn
April 5th, 2012
by Shafia Rashid; Originally posted on The FCI Blog
There is ample evidence illustrating that the health of a woman and her newborn baby are intimately connected. We know that:
- most maternal and newborn deaths are caused by the mother’s poor health before or during pregnancy or due to inadequate care in the critical hours, days, and weeks after birth
- when a woman dies in childbirth, her newborn baby is less likely to survive
Recent research conducted by Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta and colleagues at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan confirms what we already know, and goes one step further: it identifies which maternal and newborn health interventions benefit both mother and newborn. These include: Read more...