The INFO Project Blog

Calling all Francophone family planning providers. Vous etes la?

FHI has released a new French-language tool for decision makers to kick off community-based distribution of the injectable contraceptive DMPA. This new advocacy tool discusses best practices for successful implementation of this type of distribution, such as training, counseling, and ensuring supply.

The checklist included in the kit is based on the World Health Organization’s Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use.

For FHI’s English-language toolkit on community-based distribution click here.

To see INFO’s Injectables Toolkit click here.  

Want more on injectables? See the Population Reports guide to Expanding Service for Injectables.

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/FGC) threatens the sexual and reproductive health of millions of girls in parts of Africa, Asia and some Arab States. Worldwide, about 130 million girls and young women have experienced FGM/FGC, and an additional 2 million are at risk each year.

In Egypt, there has been an increase in media coverage of this issue since 12-year-old Bedur Ahmed Shaker died in June as a result of the practice. The country’s First Lady, the Grand Mufti, the Head of the Coptic Church, and the Health Minister all made public statements condemning the practice.

On Sunday, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that many in Egypt believe its ban on the practice needs to be translated into law. This is expected to be a tough debate in Parliament’s next session next month. Official statistics show that 97% of Egyptian women between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone FGM.

Throughout the article, a number of women share their stories of how FGM affects them and how they deal with the consequences. The article ends with a Coptic nun speaking with a group of women trying to address their concerns and fears. In response to a mother’s question about a potential husband rejecting her daughter because she has not been circumcised and as a result her sexual organs are “too big,” the nun responded, “Do you take your daughter to the doctor to know if her nose or eyes are too big or small? So why would you do it for that part of the body.” The nun said that there has been progress because just ten years ago it was taboo event to say “female circumcision.”

However, many activists argue that not enough has been accomplished despite more than 25 years of efforts to curtail its practice. Please share your thoughts with us on this issue. 

For more information about FGM/C, please visit www.endvaw.org and/or OneSource’s records on FGM/C 

Posted by Lisa Basalla, Program Specialist

In this week’s installment of INFO’s Pop Reporter newsletter, INFO editor Ward Rinehart writes a guest editorial about the Women Deliver conference.

Family planning leads the list of strategies for reducing maternal deaths that government ministers endorsed… Eliminating unmet need for family planning would cut maternal deaths worldwide by one-third, it is estimated.

Rinehart, who presented at the conference on INFO’s new guide, Family Planning: A Global Handbook for Providers, reports on some positive developments.

Several donor governments made their will clear with large commitments of funds. At the opening conference session, the UK announced a pledge of 100 million pounds sterling over 5 years to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Norway has pledged US $1billion over 10 years toward achieving the MDG health goals. The Netherlands and Denmark also have made substantial pledges to similar goals recently.

Announcing the UK grant, Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander said that every 1 million pounds sterling invested in family planning would avert an estimated 720,000 unwanted pregnancies, prevent 300,000 abortions, and avoid the deaths of 1,600 mothers and 22,000 infants.

A much smaller scale Indian initiative in Rajasthan introducing financial financial incentives to “get women in institutions for delivery” has proven to be an effective method in averting maternal deaths. In a new BBC Health Check broadcast about the Women Deliver conference, Claudia Hammond reports on the 1000-rupee incentives to deliver in hospital: Listen here.

Subscribe here to get INFO’s Pop Reporter weekly.

Posted by Seth.

We at the INFO Project continuously scan the news for womens-health innovations and news for our Pop Reporter newsletter and other products. Recently, there’s been a spat of reporting on the dismal state of maternal health worldwide, partly in anticipation of the worldwide summit Women Deliver, being held today through Saturday, October 20, in London. Health providers, ministers, and high-level delegates from 35 countries will join women’s rights advocates and senior UN officials to hear speakers, including Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), call for increased investments for health care for women, mothers and newborns.

“We know what is needed to save women from dying,” said Obaid in a statement to the Inter Press Service. ”Three simple interventions: Skilled birth attendants, emergency obstetric care, and family planning.”

Certainly, as the UNFPA’s Essan Niangoran pointed out yesterday in Gaborone, Botswana, maternal death is not only a leading cause of death and disability among women of reproductive age in Africa. ”It is an issue of social justice and human rights because most of these deaths are preventable,” he told Botswana’s Daily News.

Another intervention that could assist in alleviating some of the burden of maternal mortality and disability is addressing child marriage. Child Brides: Stolen Lives, a one-hour program from PBS’s award-winning newsmagazine NOW, is a gripping testimony to the urgency of stopping this harmful traditional practice.

Filmed on three continents, the program documents child marriage’s devastating impact on girls, families, communities, and nations. It aims to capture, as senior correspondent Maria Hinojosa says, “the quiet desperation of girls whose lives have already reached a turning point.”

Hinojosa travels to western Rajasthan to ask young Mamta what it was like to be married at seven years old. “I was small, there were lots of people,” she says, “they dressed me up but I didn’t know what was happening.” 

“Marriage is hell,” says a soft-spoken girl in Niger who, after being wed at 13, suffered a fistula after a prolonged labor of four days. “My parents forced me to get married. People were dancing with energy and joy, but I was crying.”

In 1994, the United Nations Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) recommended that countries adopt a minimum age for marriage of 18 years for both sexes. However, according to the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), in most developing countries, between 20 and 70% of young women marry (or start living with a partner) before age 18.

NOW’s program is available online via streaming media, podcast or download.

The advocacy community was elated when Norway announced its US $1 billion commitment towards the Deliver Now for Women and Children campaign, which combats maternal and child health around the world. The campaign, which kicked off September 26, brings together local government agencies, civil society, media and other national and international members to allocate resources and more effectively bring health services to women and children.

The New York Times coverage of Norway’s enormous gift portrayed Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg as a kind of ambassador for women and children’s health.

“I am a father,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “I see how important it is to give vaccines to my own children, and I see how unjust it is that many children do not receive this magic shot. And I am an economist. I see how cheap it is to save lives.”

Norway’s new $1 billion commitment will strengthen basic health systems that serve women and children, he said, noting that after mothers die their children often perish or become ill. Some 500,000 women die each year of pregnancy-related causes worldwide, about one each minute. In Norway, Mr. Stoltenberg said, only one in 30,000 women die in connection with childbirth, while it is one in seven in some of the poorest countries.

Although the fight to save mother and children’s lives has now received increased attention with the campaign’s kickoff, many reading these headlines know colleagues neighbors, and friends who may not comprehend the high incidence of maternal mortality, and of child mortality: Every three seconds, a child under five dies, many of preventable illnesses like diarrhea and pneumonia. As Mr. Stoltenberg’s fellow maternal and child health advocates know, this plight is easily avoidable. Many hope this campaign will underline ways to overcome obstacles to safe delivery such as obstructed labor, postpartum hemorrhage and lack of access to antenatal care. Access to safe delivery, routine in much of the developed world, should not be taken for granted.

Next up in London is the conference Women Deliver, October 18-20. Register here.