Increasing levels of violence across India due to ethnic tensions and armed insurgencies are taking their toll on women and cutting off access to crucial reproductive health services. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
BASTAR, India, Sep 26 2014 (IPS) – Twenty-five-year-old Khemwanti Pradhan is a ‘Mitanin’ – a trained and accredited community health worker – based in the Nagarbeda village of the Bastar region in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.
Since 2007, Pradhan has been informing local women about government health schemes and urging them to deliver their babies at a hospital instead of in their own homes.
Ironically, when Pradhan gave birth to her …
Tim Brewer is a Policy Analyst at WaterAid, a UK-based international charity.
A woman from Pune, Timor-Leste, collects water for her home. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret
LONDON, Nov 24 2014 (IPS) – The Ebola crisis has thrown into sharp relief the issue of water, sanitation and hygiene in treating and caring for the sick. Dying patients are being taken to hospitals which never had enough water to maintain hygiene, and the epidemic has pushed the system to the breaking point.
Last week’s World Health Organisation report produced by UN Water, the (GLAAS), has provided a sobering picture of water and sanitation services so necessary to healthcare system…
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 2015 (IPS) – The global rate of maternal deaths is reducing faster than any time in history, according to a new report presented to the United Nations on Tuesday.
The ‘Every Woman Every Child’ initiative has saved 2.4 million women and children since its inception in 2010, claims the report Saving Lives, Protecting Futures, presented by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The states maternal mortality has been nearly halved since 1990, and in 2013, 6.4 million fewer children under age five died compared to 1990. Every Woman Every Child states 11 million more women have given birth in a health facility, 8.4 million more women and girls use modern contraception, and post-natal care for women increased 25 percent.
“Our task now is to…
Anne-Marie Steyn is Series Producer of Shamba Shape-Up and a spokesperson for Farming First. The Farming First coalition is currently in New York advocating for agriculture’s central role in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.
Experts give advice on potato-planting for greater yields in an episode of Shamba Shape Up.
NAIROBI, Apr 24 2015 (IPS) – Peter looked confused as he recounted how he’d painstakingly planted potatoes to sell and to feed his family of eight, only to find that when harvest time rolled around he had been greeted with tiny tub…
María Elena Dávila, national coordinator of the Nicaraguan Sex Workers Network, participating in a workshop on the Regulation of Sex Work in this Central American nation. Credit: Courtesy of RedTraSex
MANAGUA, Jun 13 2015 (IPS) – After living in the shadows, thousands of Nicaraguan sex workers have broken their silence, won support from state institutions and gained new respect for their rights.
María Elena Dávila, national coordinator of the (TraSex), explained…
Community health worker Urmila Kasdekar performs a health check on a new born baby in Berdaballa village of western India. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
DHARNI, India, Nov 12 2015 (IPS) – In the semi-darkness of her hut in Berdaballa, a forest village 610 km northeast of Mumbai, 28-year old Babita Mavaskar sat with her newborn baby boy watching him checked by a paramedic in an important antenatal exam. After about 20 minutes the health worker emerged from the shelter and made a big announcement, “All is well. Everything, the weight, temperature and height … is normal.”
The small crowd of well wishers gathering outside is relieved. “Let’s now find a date to name t…
Noted religious scholar Maulana Samiul Haq administers oral polio vaccine to children. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Mar 29 2016 (IPS) – Pakistan and Afghanistan, the two remaining polio-endemic countries, have joined forces to eradicate poliomyelitis by vaccinating their children in synchronised campaigns.
The two neighbouring countries sharing a 2,400 kms long and porous border have been bracketed as the stumbling block in the way of the global polio eradication drive. These militancy-riddled countries have been tackling Taliban’s opposition to the administration of oral polio vaccine (OPV) to children.
Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pa…
May 29 2016 – It is well known that since the 1980s, Bangladesh has made astonishing progress on a wide variety of development indicators such as reducing the prevalence of extreme hunger and poverty, increasing primary education enrolment rates, and reducing child and maternal mortality. This progress has been mirrored by an impressive record of sustained GDP growth, spanning decades. In contrast to these successes, the quality of our democratic institutions has languished to the point where they now threaten to undermine all these hard-won gains. This article argues that the provision of public goods and services by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has not only contributed to these successes, but also to this failure.
Much, if not most, of Bangladesh s development has hap…
Zakri Abdul Hamid is science advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia, serves on the UN Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board, and on the Governing Council of a new UN Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries. He co-chairs Malaysia’s Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council, and was the founding Chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 3 2016 (IPS) – Given the enormity of the challenges confronting humanity, the world’s investment in science, technology and innovation is woefully inadequate.
Zakri Abdul Hamid
That was a key message I helped deliver Sunday Septem…
Every day around 370 million children around the world are fed at school through school meals programmes. Credit: FAO
ROME, Mar 10 2017 (IPS) – Every day some 370 million children around the world are fed at school, while learning about healthy food and nutrition through school meals programmes that also help boost attendance, the United Nations reports.
Each programme is different: beans and rice in Madagascar, spicy lentils in the Philippines, vegetable pastries and fruit in Jordan. In some countries it may be a healthy snack, or it could include take-home food such as vitamin A-enriched oil for the whole family, the UN (FAO) .
“School meals have proved…