Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues
During a meeting with women ministers from Afghanistan on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton “promised aid for female education, maternal and other health services, protection of women from violence, and for enhancing their roles in agriculture and the economy,” Agence France-Presse reports.
During the release of its five-year plan to help drive down high maternal death and fertility rates in low-income countries, the World Bank on Tuesday said “that family planning and other reproductive health services have fallen off the radar of many governments, donors and aid agencies,” Reuters reports.
Abortions Are ‘One Small Chunk Of Bigger Puzzle’ For Improving Maternal, Child Health National Post columnist Jonathan Kay examines the ongoing debate over whether Canada’s G8 child and maternal health initiative should include abortions, which according to a 2006 Oxford University Press-World Bank report, are “one small chunk of a…
WHO Bulletin Editorial Reflects On Health-Related MDGs Progress, Challenges After highlighting successes and failures of efforts to reach the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an editorial appearing in the WHO Bulletin reflects, “[t]he variable progress achieved begs the question of the feasibility of the MDG goals and targets. … The MDGs…
A Lancet World Report examines the details of the Canadian government’s strategy for the G8 maternal and child health initiative and reactions from global health leaders and politicians to the plan, including the announcement during a meeting of G8 leaders Halifax, Nova Scotia, that the initiative would not support abortion.
On the second day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa, Graca Machel, founder and president of the Foundation for Community Development, called on African governments to implement strategies aimed at empowering women in order to accelerate the continent’s social and economic development, Tanzania Daily News/allAfrica.com reports.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced legislation Wednesday that “authorizes $3.5 billion over five years to support Haiti’s rebuilding and reconstruction,” Politico’s Laura Rozen writes on her blog.
Journal Perspective Piece Discusses Rising Number Of Syphilis Cases In China In 2008, almost 9,500 babies were born with syphilis in China, “a 12-fold increase over a five year period,” according to a New England Journal of Medicine perspective piece, the “China Real Time Report” blog reports, adding that the resurgence of the disease is…
The two-day Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) ended Tuesday in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, with participants, including lawmakers from 27 African countries, appealing to the U.N. to adopt a resolution that bans FGM on the basis it is “contrary to human rights,” RFI reports (Bojang, 5/4).
Giving women vitamin A supplements does not reduce maternal death rates or improve the health of infants, according to a study published Tuesday in the Lancet, the New York Times reports.
