Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY, Jul 27 2011 (IPS) – María José Aceituno, who works at a public relations firm in the Guatemalan capital, has two children and says she is not having any more, in order to safeguard the financial position and security of her family. I would rather have two happy children than 10 who are dissatisfied, she said.
The countries of Central America have slammed on the demographic brakes by promoting sex education and access to family planning methods, in order to improve living conditions, which are marked by poverty and social inequality.
Other factors, like the high cost of living and soaring rates of violence and crime, especially in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have also acted as a disincentive to increasing family size. Aceitu…
PARIS, May 21 2012 (IPS) – Have women around the world become more empowered in their reproductive health and rights over the past 18 years? This is one of the questions that some 300 parliamentarians from around the world will be examining when they meet in Istanbul, Turkey, this week for the Fifth International Parliamentarians’ Conference on the Implementation of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) programme of action.
At the event, on May 24 and 25, MPs from six continents will discuss the progress the world’s governments are making in their efforts to protect and empower women in their reproductive health and rights: a promise they made at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo , says the European Parlia…
A doctor examines a woman in an IDP camp in Bannu, a city in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where over 40,000 pregnant women are at risk due to a lack of maternal health services. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 8 2014 (IPS) – Imagine traveling for almost an entire day in the blistering sun, carrying all your possessions with you. Imagine fleeing in the middle of the night as airstrikes reduce your village to rubble. Imagine arriving in a makeshift refugee camp where there is no running water, no bathrooms and hardly any food. Now imagine making that journey as a pregnant woman.
In northern Pakistan, a military campaign…
Ndiabou Niang was able to get access to prenatal care after her town’s mayor decided to finance the health membership of nearly 300 women and children. Courtesy: Réseau Siggil Jigéen
SYDNEY, Australia, Jul 14 2020 (IPS) – Pregnant with her second child, 30-year-old Ndiabou Niang was enduring pelvic pain, but couldn’t afford to access prenatal care in Diabe Salla, a village on the outskirts of the small town of Thilogne in north-east Senegal. Her husband was unemployed and her earning…
Women in Nigeria collect food vouchers as part of a programme to support families struggling under the COVID-19 lockdown. Credit: WFP/Damilola Onafuwa
Oct 11 2020 (IPS) – As the threat of a COVID-19 pandemic emerged earlier this year, many felt a about what would happen when it reached Africa. Concerns over the combination of overstretched and underfunded health systems and the existing load of infectious and non-infectious diseases often led to it being in apocalyptic terms.
However, it has not turned out quite that way. On September 29th, the world the one million reported deaths mark (the true figure will of course be higher). On the same day, for Africa was a …
Women’s empowerment is a crucial aim of the social networking site Fuzia. Credit: Fuzia
NEW YORK, Jan 4 2021 (IPS) – A cherished snapshot of a happy mother and a smiling grandmother is universally associated with a good childhood. In the movies, TV, or media, a broken or depressed mother’s face is hardly seen. But the reality is somewhat different. The measures communities and society take to ensure that women and girls are protected and supported are often questioned.
Shraddha Varma, co-founder, and director of social networking site Fuzia believes in enhancing women’s lives.
“Women empowerment is incomplete without key aspects like health, well…
Chiring Tamang holds the family’s new baby while his wife Priya looks on. She delivered the girl at home in their village in Nepal’s Sindhupalchowk district in February 2021. Credit: Marty Logan / IPS
Kathmandu, Nepal, Jul 21 2021 (IPS) – One year after Nepal’s Ministry of Health (MoH) appealed to international organisations in the country to urgently supply a drug used to stop excessive bleeding after childbirth, a UN agency has delivered $1 million worth of contraceptives to prevent another shortage.
The 1.6 million cycles of oral contraceptive pills and 776,000 units of injectable contraceptives and syringes will prevent roughly 75 000 unintended pregnancies, …
Ras Bongo Wisely Tafari (far right) holds on to the CARICOM’s symbol of the reparatory justice movement, the reparations baton, in Castries, Saint Lucia. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS
DOMINICA, Oct 18 2021 (IPS) – The Rastafarian organizations in the Caribbean are determined that the issue of slavery reparations will emerge from the eclipse of COVID-19.
As the world deals with the impacts of efforts to contain the virus’ spread and regional governments tackle vaccine hesitancy and a wave of misinformation, issues not directly related to COVID-19 have had to be temporarily shelved.
However, members of the Caribbean Rastafari Organization are determined …
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 10 2022 (IPS) – The global consensus about an international treaty on pandemic prevention is certainly a milestone towards the creation of a global health security framework.
A new treaty is likely to bind the member states to higher standards of compliance, especially if a global accountability mechanism is also enforced.
Consider the disregard towards the International Health Regulations (2005), IHRs, the only tool available to control what in jargon is referred as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
Despite numerous review exercises, some of which taken more than a decade ago in the aftermath of the first…