Women's Health

How Midwives on Sierra Leone’s Almost Untouched Turtle Islands are Improving Women’s Health

By Joan Erakit
Emmanuel is a male midwife. At the age of 26, he lives and works on one of eight islands off the southwest peninsular of Sierra Leone, an hour by speedboat from Mattru Jong, the capital of Bonthe District.

Bangladeshi Girls Seek Equal Opportunity

By Naimul Haq
Until five years ago, Shima Aktar, a student in Gajaghanta village in the Rangpur district of Bangladesh, about 370 km northwest of the capital Dhaka, was leading a normal life. But when her father decided that it was time for her to conform to purdah, a religious practice of female seclusion, things changed.

India: Home to One in Three Child Brides

By Neeta Lal
Basanti Rani*, a 33-year-old farmers’ wife from the northern Indian state of Haryana, recently withdrew her 15-year-old daughter Paru from school in order to marry her off to a 40-year-old man.

Helping Uganda’s HIV positive Women Avoid Unplanned Pregnancies

By Amy Fallon
Barbara Kemigisa used to call herself an “HIV/AIDS campaigner”. These days she would rather be known as an “HIV/AIDS family planning campaigner”.

East Africa Breaks the Silence on Menstruation to Keep Girls in School

By Amy Fallon
When Peninah Mamayi got her period last January, she was scared, confused and embarrassed. But like thousands of other girls in the developing world who experience menarche having no idea what menstruation is, Mamayi, who lives with her sister-in-law in a village in Tororo, eastern Uganda, kept quiet.

One Woman’s Struggle to Find the Right Contraceptive

By Miriam Gathigah
Beatrice Njeri had just come home from her job as a janitor at a primary school in Nairobi. It was August 2009.

Egypt’s Poor Easy Victims of Quack Medicine

By Cam McGrath
Magda Ibrahim first learnt that she had endometrial cancer when she went to a clinic to diagnose recurring bladder pain and an abnormal menstrual discharge. Unable to afford the recommended hospital treatment, the uninsured 53-year-old widow turned to what she hoped would be a quicker and cheaper therapy.

Stigma Still a Major Roadblock for AIDS Fight in Africa

By Julia Hotz
Though West Africa’s massive Ebola outbreak may be dominating the spotlight within the global health community, HIV/AIDS remains an enormous issue for Africa as a whole - a sentiment that Washington officials made clear this week in their discussions of legislative and technological setbacks plaguing progress in fighting the epidemic.

Nigeria Wakes Up to its AIDS Threat

By Sam Olukoya
Tope Tayo’s marriage broke up 11 years ago after she tested positive for HIV. Her angry and embarrassed husband took away their only child. Three months later, when the one year old boy tested positive, the husband dumped him with Tayo and absconded.

‘Zero Tolerance’ the Call for Child Marriage and Female Genital Mutilation

By A. D. McKenzie
Heightening their campaign to eradicate violence against women and girls, United Nations agencies and civil groups have called for increased action to end child marriage and female genital mutilation.

Focus on Child Marriage, Genital Mutilation at All-Time High

By Julia Hotz
As Tuesday’s major summits here and in London focused global attention on adolescent girls, the United Nations offered new data warning that more than 130 million girls and women have experienced some form of female genital mutilation, while more than 700 million women alive today were forced into marriage as children.

Stunting: The Cruel Curse of Malnutrition in Nepal

By Mallika Aryal
Durga Ghimire had her first child at the age of 18 and the second at 21. As a young mother, Durga didn’t really understand the importance of taking care of her own health during pregnancy.

Time to “Drop the Knife” for FMG in The Gambia

By Saikou Jammeh
Women’s rights activists in the Gambia are insisting that more than 30 years of campaigning to raise awareness should be sufficient to move the government to outlaw female genital mutilation (FMG).

Pakistan: Where Mothers Are Also Children

By Zofeen Ebrahim
If 22-year-old Rashda Naureen could go back six years in time, she would never have agreed to get married at the tender age of 16.

Reproductive Rights to Take Centre Stage at U.N. Special Session

By Thalif Deen
As the United Nations continues negotiations on a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for its post-2015 development agenda, population experts are hoping reproductive health will be given significant recognition in the final line-up of the goals later this year.

OPINION: Unleashing African Young People’s Potential

By Adebayo Fayoyin
An African proverb says “a child that we refuse to build today will end up selling the house that we may build tomorrow.”

Putting Population Management in Pacific Women’s Hands

By Catherine Wilson
Populations of many Melanesian countries in the southwest Pacific Islands region are expected to double in a generation, threatening regional and national efforts to improve low economic and human development indicators.

Conservatives and Nationalists At Centre Stage in Poland

By Claudia Ciobanu
A mix of conservative Catholicism and nationalism has become the predominant view in Polish public debate, with some worrying effects.

Lack of Toilets Keeps Women Out of Politics

By Stella Paul
Nine months after she was elected head of her village council, 36-year-old Krupa Shanti has overseen some significant changes in this rural outpost of Mallampeta, 570 km away from Hyderabad, capital of the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Here Are the Real Victims of Pakistan’s War on the Taliban

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Three days ago, Rameela Bibi was the mother of a month-old baby boy. He died in her arms on Jun. 28, of a chest infection that he contracted when the family fled their home in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency, where a full-scale military offensive against the Taliban has forced nearly half a million people to flee.

Looking to Africa’s LDCs to Learn How to Save the Lives of Millions of Mothers and their Babies

By Nqabomzi Bikitsha
Every year, three million newborn babies and almost 6.6 million children under five die globally, but if the rest of the world looked towards the examples of two of Africa's least-developed countries (LDCs), Rwanda and Ethiopia, they would perhaps be able to save these children.
« Previous Page — Next Page »
*#*