Women's Health

OPINION: The Plight of Women and Girls in Zambezi’s Floods

By Julitta Onabanjo and Michael Charles
The flooding of the Zambezi River has had devastating consequences for three countries in Southern Africa. The three worst affected countries are Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. 

Dying in Childbirth Still a National Trend in Zimbabwe

By Jeffrey Moyo
For 47-year-old Albert Mangwendere from Mutoko, a district 143 kilometres east of Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, transporting his three pregnant wives using a wheelbarrow to a local clinic has become routine, with his wives delivering babies one after the other.

Dumped, Abandoned, Abused: Women in India’s Mental Health Institutions

By Shai Venkatraman
Following the birth of her third child, Delhi-based entrepreneur Smita* found herself feeling “disconnected and depressed”, often for days at a stretch. “Much later I was told it was severe post-partum depression but at the time it wasn’t properly diagnosed,” she told IPS.

Conflict-Related Displacement: A Huge Development Challenge for India

By Priyanka Borpujari
The tarpaulin sheet, when stretched and tied to bamboo poles, is about the length and breadth of a large SUV. Yet, about 25 women and children have been sleeping beneath these makeshift shelters at several relief camps across Kokrajhar, a district in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam.

When Ignorance Is Deadly: Pacific Women Dying From Lack of Breast Cancer Awareness

By Catherine Wilson
Women now face a better chance of surviving breast cancer in the Solomon Islands, a developing island state in the southwest Pacific Ocean, following the recent acquisition of the country’s first mammogram machine.

Battle Heats Up Over Legalisation of Sex Work in India

By Neeta Lal
Thirty-six-year-old Chameli Devi, a sex worker operating out of New Delhi's G.B. Road - Asia's largest red-light district, housing an estimated 12,000 of India’s three million sex workers – is an unhappy woman these days.

Humanity’s Future: Below Replacement Fertility?

By Joseph Chamie
Is below replacement level fertility the future for humanity? The answer to this seemingly simple question regarding human reproduction is not only of considerable demographic concern, but also has enormous social, economic and environmental consequences for the planet.

Groups Push Obama to Clarify U.S. Abortion Funding for Wartime Rape

By Carey L. Biron
Nearly two dozen health, advocacy and faith groups are calling on President Barack Obama to take executive action clarifying that U.S. assistance can be used to fund abortion services for women and girls raped in the context of war and conflict.

OPINION: Stand in Solidarity with Courageous Women’s Human Rights Defenders

By Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein
Almost two decades ago, in Beijing, 189 countries made a commitment to achieve equality for women, in practice and in law, so that all women could at last fully enjoy their rights and freedoms as equal human beings.

OPINION: All Family Planning Should Be Voluntary, Safe and Fully Informed

By Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin
The tragic deaths and injuries of women following sterilisation in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh have sparked global media coverage and public concern and outrage.

Survivors of Sexual Violence Face Increased Risks

By Lyndal Rowlands
“A recurring nightmare for me is I’m trying to tell someone something and they are not listening. I’m yelling at the top of my lungs and it feels like there is a glass wall between us.”

Pakistan’s Paraplegics Learning to Stand on their Own Feet

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
When a stray bullet fired by Taliban militants became lodged in her spine last August, 22-year-old Shakira Bibi gave up all hopes of ever leading a normal life.

AIDS Is No. 1 Killer of African Teenagers

By Sam Olukoya
Two years ago, Shola* was kicked out of the family house in Abeokuta, in southwestern Nigeria, after testing HIV-positive at age 13. He was living with his father, his stepmother and their seven children.

Depression Casts Cloak of Infertility Over Kashmir Valley

By Shazia Yousuf
It was almost midnight when Mushtaq Margoob woke up to the incessant ringing of his phone. It was his patient, a young woman whom Margoob, a renowned Kashmiri psychiatrist and head of the department of psychiatry at the only psychiatric hospital in Kashmir, had been treating for depression for many years.

The Young, Female Face of HIV in East and Southern Africa

By Miriam Gathigah
Experts are raising alarm that years of HIV interventions throughout Africa have failed to stop infection among young women 15 to 24 years old.

Mozambique Tackles its Twin Burden of Cervical Cancer and HIV

By Mercedes Sayagues
The woman on bed 27 in Maputo Central Hospital’s oncology ward has no idea how lucky she is. In January, when abdominal pains racked her, a pharmacist suggested pain killers. For months, “the pain would go and return,” she told IPS. 

Fighting the “Neighbour’s Disease” in Mozambique

By Mercedes Sayagues
Mozambique is reeling under the twin burden of HIV and cervical cancer. Eleven women die of cervical cancer every day, or 4,000 a year. Yet this cancer is preventable and treatable, if caught early.

OPINION: The Survivors

By Yury Fedotov
Oct. 18 is the EU’s Anti-Trafficking Day, as well as the United Kingdom’s Anti-Slavery Day. These events offer a good opportunity to talk about human trafficking within Europe’s borders, but we should not forget that there are victims and survivors all over the world.

Displacement Spells Danger for Pregnant Women in Pakistan

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Imagine traveling for almost an entire day in the blistering sun, carrying all your possessions with you. Imagine fleeing in the middle of the night as airstrikes reduce your village to rubble. Imagine arriving in a makeshift refugee camp where there is no running water, no bathrooms and hardly any food. Now imagine making that journey as a pregnant woman.

Floods Wash Away India’s MDG Progress

By Priyanka Borpujari
The northeastern Indian state of Assam is no stranger to devastating floods. Located just south of the eastern Himalayas, the lush, 30,000-square-km region comprises the Brahmaputra and Barak river valleys, and is accustomed to annual bouts of rain that swell the mighty rivers and spill over into villages and towns, inundating agricultural lands and washing homes, possessions and livestock away.

Q&A: “The Battle Continues”

By Joan Erakit
The Programme of Action adopted at the landmark 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) included chapters that defined concrete actions covering some 44 dimensions of population and development, including the need to provide for women and girls during times of conflict, the urgency of investments in young people’s capabilities, and the importance of women’s political participation and representation.
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