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Sunday, June 28, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Women's Health
U.S.: Assault on Reproductive Health Services Shifts to States
With Republican-led efforts to divert funding from the reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood stumbling in Washington, the battle has moved to the states, with mixed results.
SOMALIA: “I Carried Him a Whole Day While He Was Dead, Thinking He Was Alive”
As the first of food aid from the United Nations World Food Programme was airlifted into Mogadishu on Wednesday, it came too late for Qadija Ali's two- year-old son Farah.
EAST AFRICA: ‘It’s Not a Heartless Mother Leaving a Child Behind, Just One Who Wants to Survive’
On the road between the Kenyan and Somali border lie the dead bodies of children who have succumbed to the famine and the hardships of making the journey from their drought-stricken villages to Kenya.
KENYA: Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting at Work
For the first time ever, the Kenyan finance minister has allocated almost four million dollars, about 3.6 percent of the primary education budget, to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls.
HEALTH: Israeli Takes a Step Forward
"One step at a time," this fairy tale says. "Wonders and miracles, these shoes brought me back my life!" For Miriam Gilebsky, walking is no simple thing, it’s an achievement greater than life, like walking on the moon, perhaps. One small step for health is one giant leap when you suffered a stroke.INDIA: Sex Selection on the Rise Despite Stricter Law
When Sujatha’s husband learned that she had conceived just five months after they got married, he became agitated over what he called her "ill-timed pregnancy". To worsen her husband’s anxiety, a test to determine the sex of the foetus showed she was carrying a girl.
NEPAL: Sex Workers Demand a Place in the Constitution
Every time Bijaya Dhakal goes out to meet people and tell them what she does for a living, the simple task becomes an act of courage requiring nerves of steel. Dhakal is the founder of Nepal’s first and only organisation of women sex workers now trying to make the state and society listen to a community long hushed by poverty and discrimination.SOUTH SUDAN: Women Hope Independence Means Less Maternal Deaths
Mother of eight, Jessicah Foni, 36, hopes that independence will mean a hospital will soon be built in her village. Foni, who has travelled from a remote village in South Sudan to the state’s capital to celebrate independence, lost two babies at birth because of the lack of medical facilities in her area.
UGANDA: Maternal Deaths Against Constitutional Rights
When Valente Inziku’s wife, Jennifer Anguko, went into labour they had decided she would go to the local referral hospital just to ensure a safe delivery.
ZAMBIA: “Every Year Flooding Makes This Place a Little Hell”
During the rainy season, and many weeks afterwards, home is never the best place to be for Miriam Banda. Until the end of 2008, she enjoyed living at her house in Kanyama, a high-density settlement bordering the central business district in Lusaka, Zambia's capital.
UGANDA-HEALTH: When Women Go Without Needed Contraceptives
When the monthly contraceptive injection that Bernadette Asiimwe, a mother of four, got from government health centres in western Uganda was out of stock for weeks, she fell pregnant with her fifth child.Navigating Challenges, Brazil Steps Up AIDS Response
Long heralded as a model for the global response to HIV/AIDS, Brazil is intensifying its actions, at home and abroad, in the face of potential setbacks including an arising need for new treatment regimens, the resultant increase in drug prices and the debate over intellectual property rights.
EGYPT: Solar Energy Projects Picking up Again After Uprising
On a blazingly hot summer’s day in Cairo, it’s 36 degrees Celsius in the shade. Air-conditioners and fans whirr across the city, burdening the national electricity grid. Last summer, the populous city experienced frequent water and power cuts, causing a furore. Consumption had grown by 2,600 megawatts, an increase of 13,5 percent from 2009.SIERRA LEONE-HEALTH: Free Health Care Not Really Free
There is a brief bustle and then a woman wails as the small body is wrapped in cloth and set on a cot by the door of the paediatric ward. Nurses in pristine white uniforms continue to pad quietly around the large room at Ola During Children's Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital city.Another Push for Reproductive Rights
By 2015, women demanding family planning products and services in the developing world will likely reach 933 million, a terrific increase from the current 818 million women demanding access to these basic reproductive commodities.
RIGHTS-UGANDA: Government Needs to Prioritise Maternal Health
Just a week after a group of civil society organisations petitioned Uganda’s constitutional court demanding that the government’s non-provision of essential services for pregnant mothers was a violation of the right to life; Margaret Nabirye lost her baby in childbirth.PAKISTAN: Women Shield Children From Extremism
When Farah’s 16-year-old son began to disappear for several nights a week without saying where he went, she was naturally worried. After he returned one day and shattered the television screen in their Peshawar home, the mother of three decided it was time to quit her job as a teacher and to find out what was making her youngest child so angry.
Thirty Years On, AIDS Epidemic a Women’s Battle
As world leaders gather in New York for a high-level conference on HIV/AIDS, United Nations agency heads, goodwill ambassadors and activists alike hope they will remember the virus's most vulnerable victims: women and girls.
ARGENTINA: Avoidable Maternal Deaths on the Rise
Argentina is moving backwards in terms of maternal mortality, with a rate three times higher than those of its neighbours Chile and Uruguay. Maternal deaths, which are actually increasing, are often the result of unsafe abortions, in a country where the practice is illegal.U.S. Takes Action Against ‘Gendercide’
Every year on Jun. 1, the People's Republic of China pulls out all the stops – hosting festivals, printing greeting cards and sponsoring public games and parades – in celebration of International Children's Day, a holiday widely acknowledged to have originated with the rise of communism and now observed primarily in communist or former communist countries.
INDIA: Unwed Tribal Mothers Seek Aid
For Janu, walking the streets to beg for alms is the only option for survival. After all, she has a two-year-old daughter to feed, and she herself, at 14 years old, is little more than a child.« Previous Page — Next Page »
Worldwide, women’s health is a serious issue. The result of a wide diversity of factors, most notably insufficient access to education, women’s health issues must be addressed. Without access to proper schooling, many girls grow up without the necessary understanding of reproductive health. Due to this, reproductive issues and sexually transmitted infections plague women in developing countries. Women struggle to battle infections such as HIV. The lack of relevant services, coupled with the lack of women’s rights pertaining to their own health, are some of the serious issues that these stories seek to explain.
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