Women's Health

The Girl Who Couldn’t Herd Goats Now Saves Lives

By Miriam Gathigah
When she was nine years old, Jane Meriwas, a Samburu from the Kipsing Plains in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, was considered of no use by her father. After all, nine of his goats had been eaten by hyenas under her watch.

Malnutrition Still Killing Three Million Children Under Five

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
Kevin’s Carter’s disturbing picture of the 1993 famine in Sudan won him a Pulitzer Prize.

Good Health Lies Just Across the Border

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Muzaffar Shah, a shopkeeper from Kabul, sits in a hospital waiting room, desperate for news. He has travelled nearly 300 km to get to the Khyber Teaching Hospital in Peshawar, capital of northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where his wife is now in intensive care.

The Battle to Save DRC’s Mothers

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
"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.

Sex Educators Struggle to Break Taboos

By Stella Paul
Liberian journalist Mae Azango says she spent a year living “like a bat, going from tree to tree” with her daughter in order to escape religious fanatics who were threatening to kill her for exposing the practice of female genital mutilation in her home country last year.

Youth Say Coca-Cola Is Easier to Find Than Condoms

By Stella Paul
“If I am thirsty and want a bottle of Coca-Cola I can get it, no matter where in the world I am. Why can’t I get contraceptives or sexual heathcare?” asked Carlos Jimmy Macazana Quispe, a youth representative from Peru currently in Kuala Lumpur for the third edition of the Women Deliver global conference on the "health and well-being of women and girls."

Maternal Healthcare Evades Marginalised Mothers

By Stella Paul
In the small village of Haldiyaganj in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, 17-year old Injuara Begum is nursing her son who was born right here on the floor of her home three years ago.

Pakistani Doctors Earn “Only Gratitude” for Treating Fistula

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Sherhshah Syed is a highly qualified doctor and president of the prestigious Pakistan National Forum on Women’s Health (PNFWH) but his income does not match his qualifications.

Heroin Dulls Hardships for Afghan Women

By Giuliana Sgrena
Located on a narrow street in a quiet neighbourhood in Kabul, the Sanga Amaj Women’s Treatment Centre is the only one of its kind in Afghanistan: named after the 22-year-old journalist who was assassinated in 2007, the facility caters exclusively to Kabul’s massive population of female drug addicts.

OP-ED: The Nexus Between Women and Development

By Babatunde Osotimehin
Every three years since 2007, a global advocacy organisation called Women Deliver has convened an international conference to talk about issues relating to the health and well-being of girls and women.

OP-ED: A Global Goal on Gender Equality, Women’s Rights and Women’s Empowerment

By Lakshmi Puri
Hardly a day goes by without a news story on some violation of women’s rights. In recent months, appalling incidents of violence against women and girls, from Delhi to Johannesburg to Cleveland, have sparked public outrage and demands to tackle these horrific abuses.

UNFPA Focuses on Contraception for 222 Million in Developing World

By Thalif Deen
When thousands of participants from around the world gather in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur next week, the primary focus will be on health and empowerment of girls and women.

No Sweet Consolation for Women Diabetics

By K. S. Harikrishnan
The disease itself may not discriminate on the basis of gender, but when it comes to healthcare for patients with diabetes, women in India find themselves at a disadvantage compared to men.

OP-ED: Put a Spotlight on African Women’s Reproductive Rights

By Agnes Odhiambo and Gauri Van Gulik
Victoria J. married in 2009 at age 14, and became pregnant shortly after. “I started labour in the morning on a Friday …. The nurse kept checking and saying I would deliver safely. On Monday she said I was weak.

Giving Paraplegic Women a New Lease on Life

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Gul Shada thought it was the end of the road for her when she and her husband met with a road accident last year in the Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Not only did the mishap leave Shada widowed at the relatively young age of 37, she also sustained an injury to her back that immobilised her.

Women’s Rights Still Denied in Latin America

By Emilio Godoy
Latin American states are still failing to provide guarantees for women's educational, sexual and reproductive rights, according to activists from different regions of the world meeting in the Mexican capital.

New Rule for State-Paid Childbirth Stirs Discontent in Armenia

By Gayane Abrahamyan
A government decree in Armenia that bars pregnant women who are not residents of Yerevan from receiving free childbirth services in the capital is causing discontent in outlying regions.

The Challenge of Being a Maasai Woman

By Joan Erakit
The Maasai tribe of Kenya and Tanzania has long been a beacon of traditional culture to many Africans - and for Westerners on safari through Maasai Mara, Samburu or Amboseli, a familiar face.

Skilled Midwives May be the Key to Healthy Babies

By Joan Erakit
The story goes like this: a young mother lies quietly in a dimly lit room having just given birth to her baby. For the next seven days she watches over the child with caution, nursing and swaddling it patiently. Fearful that the infant will not survive past a few days, she refuses to give it a name.

Monetising Human Waste and 101 (Slightly) Crazy Other Ideas

By Stephen Leahy
One, two or more of the 102 newly launched out-of-the box ideas to improve global health could be world-changing breakthroughs.

Older Women in Cuba Take Steps to Improve Quality of Life

By Ivet González
Paediatrician Grisel Navarro says she is "a different kind of retiree," because she still practises her profession, goes out and about and refuses to be "at the beck and call of her family's and everyone else's needs," something that diminishes quality of life for many Cuban women when they retire from work.
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