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Kenya’s Marie Stopes ban may drive more women to unsafe abortions
According to the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board, they banned abortion services provided by Marie Stopes following complaints from the general public. Restrictive laws mean that women resort to unsafe means. jbdodane/Flickr Michael Mutua, African Population and Health Research Center The Kenyan Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board has stopped the NGO Marie Stopes International from performing…
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Why Family Planning Matters for Maternal Deaths and Child Survival
Contraception empowers women to plan the number of children they will have. Tizta Tilahun Degfie, African Population and Health Research Center Family planning improves child survival and reduces maternal deaths. But the uptake of family planning in Africa is only 33%, nearly half the world average of 64%. The contraceptive prevalence rate in African countries…
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Will Trump’s Global Family Planning Cuts Cause Side Effects?
Actress and U.N. Population Fund Goodwill Ambassador Ashley Judd visited a refugee camp in Mafraq, Jordan in 2016. AP Photo/Raad Adayleh Written by Rachel Sullivan Robinson, American University School of International Service President Donald Trump is leading an assault on family planning around the world. Most recently, his administration cut off U.S. contributions to the…
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Why Mothers Aren’t Accessing Antenatal Care Early in Their Pregnancies
Anja Smith, Stellenbosch University South Africa has extremely high maternal mortality levels. This is true when compared with developed countries as well as other developing countries. According to the World Health Organisation, for every 100,000 live births in the country in 2015, 138 women died due to pregnancy and childbirth complications. In Sweden, fewer than…
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Why a new vaginal ring could be a game-changer in HIV prevention
Thesla Palanee-Phillips, University of the Witwatersrand The results of the two studies showing that a vaginal ring can help reduce the risk HIV infection among women is being hailed as an important HIV prevention breakthrough. Launched four years ago, the two clinical trials, known as ASPIRE and The Ring Study, set out to determine how…
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Save the Children Sounds Alarm on Plight of the World’s Urban Poor
When you think about very low- and middle-income countries you might assume that the poor in deep rural pockets in these countries have the highest chance for maternal and infant mortality. That isn’t the case according to Save the Children’s latest State of the World’s Mothers report released today. The report says that it is…
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41 Maternal Health Organizations to Follow and Support #IntlMHDay
Today is the 2nd annual International Day of Maternal Health and Rights which calls attention to and demands action for the right of every woman to respectful maternity care no matter where she lives in the world. This is critical because a woman dies in childbirth every two minutes totalling nearly 300,000 maternal deaths each…
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IN PHOTOS: Family Planning from Addis Ababa to Johannesburg
People the world over come here every day looking for family planning information. Knowing that, I have decided to create a compendium post of sorts about everything I have learned and seen about family planning in my travels to and reporting from sub-Saharan Africa over the past few years. I first learned about the critical importance of…
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Ethiopian Health Workers Receive Influx of Family Planning Training
In sub-Saharan Africa, 49 million women use traditional methods of family of no family planning methods at all. In Ethiopia, 39.1 percent of women use modern contraceptives up from 15 percent in 2005. The current low rate of contraceptive use in Ethiopia is a result of a combination of factors: cultural biases as well as a…
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Join Ashley Judd In Supporting Health Workers in Haiti
By Ashley Judd, PSI Global Ambassador Virgila is more charismatic and animated than most actors I know. She’s a PSI-trained health worker on the outskirts of Port Au Prince, Haiti. And she’s passionate about her work. She goes door-to-door educating women about the benefits of reversible contraception like the IUD. Giving birth is dangerous business…
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How PSI Reinforces Positive Reproductive Health Messaging Through Branding, Edutainment
In Tanzania, orange has increasingly become the recognized color of family planning and reproductive health services. Population Services International’s orange Familia brand is quite common in most regions of this coastal country of 49 million. PSI, a global non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health of people in the developing world, has consistently and effectively…
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Traveling to Tanzania With PSI, IntraHealth International, and Mandy Moore
Over the years I have had the distinct privilege of meeting health workers around the world from Ethiopia and Kenya to Tanzania and South Africa to India and Brazil. Health workers, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, are the unequivocal backbone of health systems that can oftentimes be severely taxed due to the overwhelming number of people…
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Uganda Holds First National Family Planning Conference
While her husband holds their youngest child, Twesigye Christente waits to receive a long-acting contraceptive at the Kinaaba Health Center II. Photo: UNFPA/Omar Gharzeddine This week Uganda held its first national family planning conference in Kampala. This is particularly significant because family planning has not always been pressing on the agenda of Uganda’s longtime president, Yoweri Museveni. In…
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Rwanda Leads the World in Women Lawmakers
By Elaine Tucci Elaine Tucci is the Co-Founder and CEO of Women Lead to Change www.womenleadtochange.org As the world learns more about the promise of women to bring peace, prosperity and economic well-being to nations, Rwanda has become a poster child of this promise. Thriving after one of the most brutal genocides in history, today…
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10 Top Tweets from the Family Planning Conference: Day 2
Choosing ten top tweets from day two of the International Conference on Family Planning wasn’t easy. Thousands of experts, researchers, those representing NGOs, and stakeholders are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia this week at the largest conference on family planning and reproductive health. Below are ten tweets we feel are informative and provide fantastic discussion points…
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![[Photos] Family Planning Kits from Ethiopia, Zambia, South Africa](https://socialgoodmoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/dsc5971.jpg)
[Photos] Family Planning Kits from Ethiopia, Zambia, South Africa
I have been fortunate to visit health posts and family planning clinics in a handful of countries. One of the things I always ask to see while visiting are family planning kits used for educational purposes for clients. Some of the kits have been fancy, others have been fairly rudimentary, but they all serve the…
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10 Top Tweets from the #FamilyPlanning Conference: Day 1
Today was the first day of the International Conference on Family Planning in Addis Ababa. With thousands of participants at the conference there was a flurry of tweets throughout the day. Here are ten tweets we identified as extremely informative. You can also follow the conversation at a host of hashtags: #FP2020, #FullAccess, #FamilyPlanning, and #ICFP2013. Related articles…
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Top 12 Twitter Handles to Follow During This Week’s #FamilyPlanning Conference #ICFP2013
This week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 4000 experts, researchers, journalists, and stakeholders are embarking upon a robust conversation about family planning and how critical it is for 222 million women in the developing world that lack access to family planning services, commodities, and education. We have identified 12 top Twitter handles to follow during the…
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Infographic of the Week: An Integrated Approach to HIV/AIDS and Family Planning Services
An integrated approach to healthcare no matter the setting is a more effective and rights-based approach to healthier outcomes. When family planning services are available at HIV/AIDS clinics, Population Action International (PAI) believes patients will receive better care, health workers will be more efficient, and dollars will be saved. In sub-Saharan Africa integrated clinic settings…
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Our Newest Partner: Marie Stopes
We are happy to announce that we have partnered with Marie Stopes, one of the leading global organizations that works for reproductive healthcare for all. Marie Stopes International (MSI) is an international non-profit organization that provides quality family planning and reproductive healthcare to the poorest and most vulnerable individuals across 42 countries. Their mission is…