Each year, 16 million girls aged 15-19 give birth. 50,000 of them die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. And 95 percent of those births occur in developing countries.
“No scalpel, no stitch and no rest needed,” guarantees Dr. Ghulam Shabbir Sudhayao, referring to the surgical procedure called vasectomy - the least popular method of birth control around the world, including Pakistan.
The Summit on Family Planning that is taking place in London on Wednesday is a bid to get governments around the world to commit more resources to safeguarding women’s reproductive rights, according to the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
By ordering a ban on polio immunisation, in its strongholds along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Taliban is holding up an ambitious global programme to rid the world of the crippling childhood disease, say World Health Organisation (WHO) doctors.
One year after the formation of South Sudan, the country’s women say that independence has not resulted in the positive political, economic and social changes that they had hoped for.
Experts say that underfunded pilot universal healthcare sites to be set up by South Africa as part of its proposed national health insurance may be doomed to fail as debate rages about how the move to more equitable healthcare will be funded.