Updates

Originally posted by the World Bank on 09/24/2011
By: Julia Ross, Corporate and Home Page Editor for the World Bank website

Countries like South Korea and Thailand have seen similar demographic formulas work to their advantage in recent decades: falling fertility rates lead to burgeoning adult working populations lead to greater economic productivity.

How did they harness these changes to create engines of growth? According to speakers at a World Bank panel on “Realizing the Demographic Dividend,” greater investments in health, family planning, and gender equality paved the way, followed by further investments in education, youth development, and job creation. Read more...

By: Kristin Rosella, Program Associate for Strategic Partnerships for Women Deliver

Thousands of women in low-resource areas of Mexico, Nicaragua, and Tanzania are now getting life-saving cervical cancer screenings through a unique public-private partnership between Grounds for Health, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, and coffee-farming cooperatives. Read more...

By: Nalini Saligram, global health advocate and Founder & CEO of Arogya World; originally posted on Huffington Post

Women are powerful.

Women are central figures in every family, affecting the health -- and future -- of children everywhere. Women also shape world policy. We advocate hard for issues we care deeply about. Last year, it was women who made saving lives during childbirth THE issue of the year. Women got world leaders to commit to action. Womens voices count.

By: Rati Bishnoi, Special Projects Intern at Women Deliver

Rukia Seif holds an unusual place in her community.

In addition, to being a mother of three, Seif is a population, health, and environment (PHE) peer educator in her Tanzanian village on the outskirts of Saadani National Park. Read more...

By: Rati Bishnoi, Special Projects Intern at Women Deliver

The Kenyan finance ministry this month announced plans to allocate $3.4 million in the current fiscal budget to provide free sanitary pads to school girls in an effort to remove a major barrier to education in the east African nation. Read more...

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Communications Specialist at Women Deliver

In Bihar, one of India’s least developed and most populous states, men and women seeking information on contraceptives have faced barriers of all kinds: cultural, financial and socio-economic. The need for action is apparent: 58 percent of the population is under age 25, the median age of marriage for women from traditional villages is 15, and 28 percent of women give birth to their first child before the age of 18. In response, Pathfinder’s Promoting Change in Reproductive Behavior (PRACHAR) Project has been working since 2001 to transform attitudes and behaviors around contraceptive use and demand, with the aim of delaying and spacing pregnancies among adolescents and newlywed couples. Read more...

Early this month, over 120 ambassadors, ministers, parliamentarians, advocates, youth and media gathered today at the International Peace Institute (IPI) for a high-level policy forum, Prevention and Protection Save Lives: Girls, Women and HIV, co-hosted by Women Deliver, IPI, the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations and Family Care International. Watch the video of the event, and click through to see part II:

Girls, Women, and HIV, Part 1 from International Peace Institute on Vimeo.

By: Kristin Rosella, Program Associate for Strategic Partnerships at Women Deliver

Last week (June 1-2, 2011), GBCHealth, formerly known as the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, announced that it will expand its mission to a broader public health mandate, including a focus on girls’ and women’s health, education, and empowerment. The announcement came during the GBCHealth 10th Anniversary Conference held in New York, NY on June 1-2, 2011. For more than a decade, GBCHealth has been working to engage the private sector in the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, to increase the number of corporate health programs, and to improve partnerships with civil society and governments. And now, GBCHealth will not only take on a new name, but it will take on new responsibility in the fight for better global health. Read more...

By: Serra Sippel, President of the Center for Health and Gender Equity in Washington, D.C.; originally posted on the Huffington Post

We can end HIV/AIDS right now if we want to. We already know how. We know how it is transmitted; we know how to prevent and treat it. We are just not doing what it takes to end it.

The United States and other countries represented at the United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, which starts today, can change that. Unfortunately, there are already signs that we are going to stay the same failed course. Some country delegations, led by the Holy See (note: a non-member state with no epidemic that is neither a donor or aid recipient country), are working to block all references in the final outcome document to womens rights and access to sexual and reproductive health services. Despite the fact that sexual transmission is the number one way HIV is spread, despite the fact that women account for half of all people globally living with HIV, some countries would rather pursue a moralistic agenda around sex and women than put an end to AIDS.