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9 Last-Minute Virtual Valentine’s Day Gifts for Good
If you’re like many of us you may have waited until the very last-minute to buy your loved ones Valentine’s Day gifts. While you can still run out and buy a wealth of flowers, cards, and chocolates, here are nine virtual Valentines’s Day gifts you can give that also give back. Oxfam Unwrapped: Oxfam recommends giving…
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Bill and Melinda Gates’ 15-Year Bet For a Better World
Each January Bill and Melinda Gates release their Annual Letter. This year they are taking a bet on the world’s future. 15 years ago the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was started and there have been substantial improvements in global health and development since then because of its dedication to the world’s poorest people. Now,…
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5 Global Health Stories We’re Following This Year
2015 will be an interesting year in global health primarily because this is the year when the Millennium Development Goals should ideally be reached. Global health experts admit that many of the goals, for example MDG5, will not be reached globally even though some of them have already been reached on a country level. Ethiopia effectively reached MDG4…
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Our 12 Biggest Highlights of 2014
2014 was a very good year! We partnered with leading NGOs and nonprofits to advance causes that mean the difference between life and death and quality living for the world’s poorest citizens. We traveled around the world to report on water and sanitation, newborns, maternal health, disaster relief, and health workers. We traveled domestically to report…
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Our 7 Favorite #NGO Vine Videos of the Year
There were really powerful and poignant Vine videos that were published by NGOs, foundations, and nonprofits this year. Even though adding Vine into their social media repertoire hasn’t hit a tipping point within the nonprofit community yet, we still believe Vine is an effective medium to convey short, but impactful messages. Here are our seven favorite Vine…
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Our Top 10 Most Read Posts of 2014
Over the course of this year we have shared a great deal of global health news and information, reports from the field in Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Tanzania, and the Phillipines, and have broken down some of the most pressing global health documents. That said, some of our posts received many more reads than others. Here is…
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Why This 21-Year-Old Filipino Mother Dropped Out of School in 6th Grade
I met Jasmine and her son, Kent John, 7-months-old, on a sunny day at a free health clinic in Ormoc, a busy port city on Leyte island in the Philippines. At just 21-year-old Jasmine came to the clinic because Kent John had been experiencing a cough and fever for two weeks. Luckily located very close to the…
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5 Maternal Health Organizations to Support Now
Every day 800 women die due to largely preventable causes during childbirth. That number is mentioned everywhere maternal health is mentioned and championed, but it always bears repeating. Until the drastic maternal mortality numbers decline the data must remain front and center. Mothers’ lives depend on us knowing the facts. Over the past few decades maternal…
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How Mother’s Loving Support Encourages Breastfeeding in Zambia
Mother’s Loving Support is a non-profit volunteer organisation borne out of the founder’s desire to encourage and support women as they breast feed their babies while continuing to work outside the home. In Zambia, breastfeeding a child is a socially accepted and encouraged step with the coming of a child, but many women in urban…
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7 Facts About Premature Births You Might Not Have Known
Photo: A premature baby is shown in the postnatal ward at Cama Hospital, a major hospital for women and children, in Mumbai, India. UN Photo/Mark Garten Premature births are now the number one killer of babies globally. Of the 6.3 million children under five who died last year, 1.1 million of them died due to complications from premature…
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New homes recreate shattered lives in the Philippines
This post was originally published on the World Vision USA blog. At everyone’s most basic level, we all want somewhere to lay our head every night. Filipinos living in the path of last year’s Typhoon Haiyan’s early morning storm surge and over 300km/hour winds lost everything within a 30-minute span, including their homes, and many,…
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India Launches Massive Scale-Up of Pentavalent Vaccine
This month begins a massive scale-up of Pentavalent vaccine for India’s children. With the largest rate of child mortality in the world, this new, national immunization effort will help reduce the number of child deaths in India. The Pentavalent vaccine combines diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) with hepatitis B (hepB) and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib). Haemophilus influenzae type b kills 72,000 Indian children…
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Turkana Children in Kenya Continue to Suffer Malnutrition Amid Poor Health Services
Last week, I travelled from the capital city of Nairobi, Kenya, to Turkana County which is in the northern part of the country. Turkana is a largely pastoralist community with a population of 855,000 people. The county faces major problems, chief among them recurring droughts which has for years crippled the county’s economic development. The…
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Why Secondary Education for Girls Reduces Child Marriage, Early Pregnancies
UNESCO just released its report, Sustainable Development: Post 2015 Begins With Education, that takes a look at the critical importance of education on the post-2015 agenda. The core stance in the report portends that without greater access to education poverty eradication will become increasingly difficult to achieve by 2030. The betterment of women’s and girls’ lives…
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New Report on Child Mortality Trends Released
Today a collaborative report on trends in child mortality was released by the World Bank, UNICEF, the United Nations and the World Health Organization. According to the Levels and Trends in Child Mortality report, child mortality has dropped by 49 percent since 1990. Even so, Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4) has yet to be reached.…
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Introducing Our Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Correspondents
As our work continues to expand globally especially as the MDG deadline nears in 2015 we want to ensure that international voices are the cornerstone of our coverage of maternal, newborn, and child health worldwide. We are beginning with three correspondents: Winfred Ogdom, a nutritionist from Uganda, Maryanne W. Waweru a motherhood blogger and journalist from Nairobi, Kenya,…
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Logistics Team Visits South Sudan to Assess Road Conditions Amid Looming Famine
Last month, a United Nations team travelled to Western Equitoria, Central Equatoria, and Western Bahr El Ghazal in South Sudan to assess road conditions, an important task when famine looms in a region that is mostly agrarian. Without passable roads it is impossible for lifesaving, critical health supplies, health workers, aid agencies, and most importantly food…
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Sharing Moms’ Stories for #WorldBreastfeeding Week: Ebony #WBW2014
Today marks the end of World Breastfeeding Week, but we still have more breastfeeding stories to share after today. We believe that moms help fellow moms through personal stories. That’s why we will continue to share the breastfeeding experiences of new and experienced moms alike. No one wants to feel alone at 2 AM in…
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Sharing Moms’ Stories for #WorldBreastfeeding Week: Hope #WBW2014
One of the biggest concerns of breastfeeding mothers is whether or not they are producing enough breast milk for their babies. It’s a valid concern. Having a low milk supply can become an overwhelming frustration for mothers. Some turn to formula and others like Hope turn to pumping. When Hope didn’t think she was producing…
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Sharing Moms’ Stories for World Breastfeeding Week: Lauren #WBW2014
Lauren, who writes at the Milky Way, shares a beautiful story about loving her son and nursing him to feel a closer mother and son bond. Lauren is open and completely honest about new motherhood. We love Lauren’s breastfeeding story for its raw emotion that many fellow mothers will connect with. Read Lauren’s story, Why I Chose…