Under pouring rain, hundreds of young and expectant mothers stand in line. With her bare feet and the bottom of her dress covered in mud, Rashida is one of them, clutching her emaciated infant. She lost her husband on the treacherous trek from Myanmar to Bangladesh, and with nowhere to go and her resources exhausted, rain-drenched and standing in this long, muddy line for food and medicine for her child is her only hope.
Patience*, a Ugandan maid, planned on taking her three-year-old son for polio immunization during the country’s mass campaigns a year ago, until her landlord’s wife told her a shocking myth.
For many women in Mandera County – a hard to reach, insecure and arid part of North Eastern Kenya – the story of life from childhood to adulthood is one about sheer pain and struggle for survival.
An African proverb says that every woman who gives birth has one foot on her grave.
Sadly, this is still true today, especially within the context of the AIDS epidemic.
Delegates to this week’s annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva should agree on an ambitious agenda to sharply cut the rate of newborn deaths and stillbirths over the next two decades, according to maternal and infant health experts.
Smiling as she breastfeeds her six-week-old baby boy, Lindiwe Dlamini, 38, is optimistic about his future.
"Many hospitals and health centres" that are not run by NGOs "do not meet health standards," according to Dominique Baabo, provincial medical inspector for North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
A group of Argentine paediatricians has been combining work on environmental protection and child health for more than 10 years. It appears a basic principle to apply, but the task is turning out to be increasingly challenging and complex.
As the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approaches, Pakistan must reckon with its patchy progress on maternal and child health.