Sexual and Reproductive Health with Isaac Eranga

A 25-minute do-it-yourself Urine Malaria Test (UMT) kit has been released to the Nigeria public by a United States based Company-Fyodor Biotechnologies Corps through Geneith Pharmaceuticals Nigeria Ltd. The strip works the same way pregnancy strip works. The malaria kit is the first-ever non-blood malaria test kit that will tell in about 25 minutes if a fever is caused by malaria or not. According to the company, what is required is just a few drops of urine without any reagent or equipment. According to Eddy Agbo, Fyodor Biotechnologies Corps Chief Executive Officer, half a million people die of malaria yearly, stressing that most malaria deaths occur within 48 hours of fever onset and children under-five years are particularly vulnerable. UMT was the first to have its clinical trial validated in Nigeria. The test process is simple: add patient urine into sample cup provided in kit; dip and leave UTM strip in the sample for 25 minutes; read result: one line ...

Female condoms could be fun when used as a family planning method in preventing unwanted pregnancy and child spacing. The following below are basic tips about female condoms: *It is inserted into the vaginal before sexual intercourse. *Sperms are collected in the condom and therefore do not enter the vagina to fertilise the ovum. *Remove the condom soon after the intercourse, and before standing up to prevent spillage. *It offers good protection if used correctly during every intercourse. *It also provides protection against sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS.

Female condoms could be fun when used as a family planning method in preventing unwanted pregnancy and child spacing. The following below are basic tips about family planning: *It is inserted into the vaginal before sexual intercourse. *Sperms are collected in the condom and therefore do not enter the vagina to fertilise the ovum. *Remove the condom soon after the intercourse, and before standing up to prevent spillage. *It offers good protection if used correctly during every intercourse. *It also provides protection against sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS.

* The pill contains artificial hormones like those produced by the body when a woman is pregnant. * The ovum (egg cell) is not released while a woman is on the pill. * One pill is taken at the same time everyday. Family planning expert will advise you on how to take it. * If instructions are followed carefully, the pill is very effective. * it is easy to take, safe and cheap. * Most women do not suffer from any serious side effects. A few women may have a temporary minor side effects similar to pregnancy (e.g. nausea and headaches). These will soon go away. * You can take the pill as long as you do not want to have a baby.

It is now an acceptable fact that there is link between violence against women (VAW) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), says report. Studies have revealed that directly addressing VAW and gender iniquality has significant potential to make HIV prevention programmes more effective. Gender is used to refer to ideals about characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed, while sex refers to anatomical and biological characteristics of people's bothers: male, female or intersex (possessins both male and female traits). Gender analysis identifies, analyses and informs action to address iniqualities that arise from the different social roles assigned to women and men, the unequal power relationships between them, and the consequences of these iniqualities on their lives, their health and wellbeing. Gender analysis in HIV programming highlights how iniqualities constrain women's ability to protect themselves from HIV, and to seek safe testing, ca...

April 14th, 2015 Statement submitted by Women Deliver, and accepted and included as an official statement at the Comission on Population and Development Invest in girls and women: everybody wins Imagine a world where no woman dies giving life, where no baby is born with HIV, where every girl is able to attend school and receive a quality education, and where everybody — including girls, women and young people — has the opportunity to live to their full potential. That world is within reach — if we want it. Right at this moment, a truly universal and transformational course is being set, changing the world as we know it and as we want it. United Nations Member States are negotiating the final parameters of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. Drivers such as the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action and the Millennium Developmen...

April 16th, 2015 Pregnant girls are now barred from school in my country Sierra Leone. The government has decided that as schools reopen this week for the first time since the vicious Ebola outbreak that has claimed over 10,000 lives – and plunged our country into fear, lock downs, economic and emotional pain – pregnant girls should simply stay away. According to Dr. Minkailu Bah, the Minister of Education, Sierra Leone is “not going to legalize teenage pregnancy.” To justify this baffling policy, the Minister and his supporters, including the Council of School Principals and the Head Teachers Association, have invoked custom (it’s not our “custom” to have pregnant girls in class with other girls who are “innocent”) and morality (pregnant girls are a “bad influence” on other girls). Human rights organizations and advocates like myself have expressed outrage and shock (you can sign my petition on the issue here .) As I aske...

​​10 APRIL 2015 | GENEVA Caesarean section is one of the most common surgeries in the world, with rates continuing to rise, particularly in high- and middle-income countries. Although it can save lives, caesarean section is often performed without medical need, putting women and their babies at-risk of short- and long-term health problems. A new statement from the World Health Organization (WHO) underscores the importance of focusing on the needs of the patient, on a case by case basis, and discourages the practice of aiming for “target rates”. Caesarean section may be necessary when vaginal delivery might pose a risk to the mother or baby – for example due to prolonged labour, foetal distress, or because the baby is presenting in an abnormal position. However, caesarean sections can cause significant complications, disability or death, particularly in settings that lack the facilities to conduct safe surgeries or treat potential complications. Ideal r...

April 6th, 2015 Think about this: Africa has 24% of the global burden of disease, but just 3% of the health workforce. High-income countries, which have only one-third of the world’s population, make up about 75% of the health workforce. This imbalance must be addressed. Skilled health workers are the foundation of a functioning health system. When a country has a shortage of healthcare providers, the entire population suffers and women are disproportionately impacted. In developing regions, the lack of trained doctors, nurses, and midwives to provide women with pregnancy and delivery care has devastating consequences: nearly 300,000 women die every year from pregnancy, millions suffer serious health problems, and three million newborns do not survive their first month of life. It is clear that increasing the number of well-trained health workers is a critical step to improving the health and wellbeing of women and ...

April 3rd, 2015 Engaging adolescent girls has garnered a great amount of attention this year, both during the recent 59th Commission on the Status of Women and in talks about the post-2015 development agenda. That dedication to engagement, however, is not always accompanied by a clear understanding of how best to do so. Following a rousing speech or panel, many are left with the following question: “How exactly to address the needs of or issues most affecting adolescent girls?” And in a sea of experts, advocates, and government officials, it’s easy to lose sight of the best source of information about adolescent girls – adolescent girls themselves. That is why in the days before the world came together to celebrate 20 years since the Beijing Conference at CSW59, over fifty such experts, advocates, government officials, and adolescent girls gathered to advance our understanding of how to engage adolescent girls in the pro...

April 8th, 2015 When society invests in women and girls, everybody wins. That’s the mantra of Katja Iversen ’s organization, Women Deliver, a leading global advocate for girls’ and women’s health, rights, and wellbeing. In the following interview, Iversen explores the power that corporates have to significantly impact the lives of women – and why their success is really good for business. The following interview is part of the series Leading Shared Value, spotlighting the presenters at the 2015 Shared Value Leadership Summit: Business at its Best . Why is shared value one of your priorities as a CEO in the global women’s advocacy space? Women Deliver works to improve the health, rights, and wellbeing of girls and women around the world, with a particular focus on maternal and reproductive health and the social determinants. We work strategically with the private sector, which is a powerful actor in internationa...

Posted on March 9, 2015 By Katie Millar, Technical Writer, MHTF At a standing room only event last week at The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health , global experts gathered to discuss the need for, barriers to, and the way forward for maternal and newborn integration. But what is integration and why is it so desperately needed? Every year approximately 300,000 women and 5.5 million newborns, including stillborns, die needlessly. The causes of these deaths are often similar since the mother and her newborn are inextricably linked both socially and biologically. For the panel, Putting Mothers and Babies First: Benefits Across a Lifetime , Ana Langer , Director of the Maternal Health Task Force; Joy Riggs-Perla , Director of Saving Newborn Lives at Save the Children; Alicia Yamin , Policy Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights and Kirsten Gagnaire , Executive Director of the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action ...

January 22nd, 2015 By: Tewodros Melesse;  Originally posted by  Huffington Post The snow-capped mountains of the Swiss skiing resort of Davos seem a million miles away from the small wooden shack in a slum in Pampanga, Philippines that Marites Garcia calls home. Every day she sees her eight children and two grandchildren go without food. It breaks her heart but there's little she can do. She doesn't have an education or a job and neither does her husband. "It was an accident to have so many children. I didn't plan it. Two children would have been enough," Marites said. Marites is one of 225 million women who would like to use contraception but can't get hold of it. In the past Marites' story may have seemed of little consequence to the high powered business leaders who get together for their annual summit in exclusive Davos. But now they are beginning to realize how much Marites ...

March 8, 2013 | By Health Editor By Amy Norton HealthDay Reporter FRIDAY, March 8 (HealthDay News) — Women who use petroleum jelly vaginally may put themselves at risk of a common infection called bacterial vaginosis, a small study suggests. Prior studies have linked douching to ill effects, including bacterial vaginosis, and an increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases and pelvic inflammatory disease. But little research has been conducted on the possible effects of other products some women use vaginally, said Joelle Brown, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the new study. She and her colleagues found that of 141 Los Angeles women they studied, half said they’d used some type of over-the-counter product vaginally in the past month, including sexual lubricants, petroleum jelly and baby oil. Almost as many, 45 percent, reported douching. When the researchers tested the women for infections, they found tha...

By Alan Mozes HealthDay Reporter THURSDAY, April 18 (HealthDay News) — In the five years since launching a nationwide human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination program among girls between the ages of 12 and 26, Australia has seen a huge drop in the number of cases of genital warts, new research reveals. Among Australian girls in the targeted age range for vaccination, the country saw genital wart cases plummet by 59 percent within just the first two years of the program’s launch in 2007. By aggressively vaccinating girls against HPV (which is responsible for 90 percent of genital wart diagnoses), Australia appears to have offered considerable protection not just to its female population but also its men as well. How? Researchers point to a phenomenon known as “herd immunity,” whereby the immunity acquired by a certain segment of the population — in this case, women — ends up protecting an unvaccinated segment of the population (men). In the same timeframe Austr...

March 10th, 2015 By: Ann M. Starrs, Guttmacher Institute; Originally posted on Thomson Reuters Foundation Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Let the 21st century be the century of women,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has famously said. “The empowerment and rights of girls and women must be at the heart of everything we do.” “Make it happen,” one can easily imagine women from around the world saying to UN member states in response. Fittingly, “Make It Happen” is a motto for this year’s International Women’s Day. But we’re not there yet. In September 2015, UN delegates will come together in New York to decide on the Sustainable Development Goals, which will drive the global agenda on social, economic and environmental development for the next 15 years. Work thus far has resulted in 17 draft goals and 169 specific targets. While none of th...

March 10th, 2015 “You have not been randomly selected,” the Danish Minister of Trade and Development, Mogens Jensen told the high-level participants last week at the first meeting of the newly established Danish Women Deliver Committee. “You are here because you represent an institution or organization, which I see contributing to involving the Danes, and the world, in the most important issue of our time - the struggle for women's and girls' health and rights.” Around the lunch table in the Foreign Ministry’s old warehouse sat 15 of the 20 committee members - key influencers representing cultural associations, trade unions, the media, the private sector, and organizations active in development cooperation and political life. HRH Crown Princess Mary, who will be the patron of the Women Deliver conference, was also there as she will be following the work of the Committee. The meeting was an opportunity for K...

Africa is long known for high rates of hunger, undernutrition and infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS but a disturbing new threat of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) associated with overweight, obesity and diet-related NCDs is emerging in many countries. The rapid unplanned urbanization of countries in the African Region has resulted in increasing consumption of free sugars, sugar-sweetened drinks and processed foodstuffs. To help improve dietary choices and counter the rapid upsurge of NCDs, WHO released updated recommendations for adults and children to reduce the intake of free sugars throughout the life course.  WHO further recommends that in both adults and children, the intake of free sugars be reduced to less than 10% of total energy intake and a further reduction to below 5% of total energy intake would provide additional health benefits. “After years of research and over 9000 studies, the dangers of high levels of sugars consumption are finally starting to...

By Eranga Isaac Family planning allows individuals and couples to anticipate and attain their desired number of children and the spacing and timing of their births. It is achieved through use of contraceptive methods and the treatment of involuntary infertility. A woman’s ability to space and limit her pregnancies has a direct impact on her health and well-being as well as on the outcome of each pregnancy. Every day, 1,600 women and more than 10,000 newborns die from preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Almost 99% of these maternal and 90% of neonatal deaths occur in the developing countries. As the first pillar of safe motherhood and essential component of primary health care, family planning plays a major role in reducing maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality. Family planning enhances efforts to improve family health. However, traditional beliefs, religious barriers and lack of male involvement have weakened family planning interventio...

March 5th, 2015 By Katja Iversen; Originally posted on Devex I will never forget the evening in 2009 when I heard Sean, a 19-year-old spoken-word artist from Brooklyn, New York, give a performance about women dying during pregnancy or childbirth in Sierra Leone; it left me in tears. I am a fairly seasoned development professional and I have worked on the issue of maternal health for most of my career. I have written extensively about the issue, participated in hundreds of meetings and have read countless reports on the topic. But few things have gotten to me as much as listening to that young man use  his voice and artistic vision to convey how unfair, gruesome and needless it is to let a woman die giving life. I left that night inspired, with a new appreciation and understanding of the powerful connection between art and advocacy. Yes, as advocates we need the evidence on which to build our case, but it takes ...

March 5th, 2015 Contact: Jessica Malter, Women Deliver jmalter@womendeliver.org Stephanie Platis, Global Health Strategies splatis@globalhealthstrategies.com On International Women’s Day, Women Deliver honors fifteen journalists championing the health and rights of girls and women through their reporting March 5, 2015, New York, NY – To celebrate International Women’s Day (March 8), Women Deliver is honoring 15 journalists for their consistent and game-changing coverage of maternal, sexual and reproductive health and rights issues at the global and national levels. The 15 honorees are women and men from 12 countries across Africa, Asia and North and South America. They have used their voices and media platforms to bring attention to issues like female genital mutilation in Liberia, Cameroon and Tanzania; women’s rights abuses in India and Pakistan; teenage pregnancy in Uganda; contraceptive access in th...

March 5th, 2015   By: The International HIV/AIDS Alliance Mary*, 19, is from Yambio in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state and is living with HIV.  Orphaned at a young age and brought up by her aunt, she’s smart and determined to see her education through to university level if she can.  Few girls her age even reach secondary education – they often drop out early due to early marriage, adolescent pregnancy or their parents not recognizing the value of girls staying in school. Mary also sells sex.  Finding the money for her school fees was proving difficult and she began selling sex in order to continue her schooling.  Sex work in South Sudan is criminalised and sex workers often find themselves discriminated against by healthcare providers and law enforcement agents who are known to harass them when they find condoms in their bags. Mary is lucky in that she has been supported by the YMC...

  Photo Credit: Mark Tuschman Why Are Women and Children Still Dying? Dr. Denise Raquel Dunning November 12, 2014 Nigeria, one of the richest countries in Africa, also boasts one of the world’s highest rates of maternal, newborn, and child death. One in 13 Nigerian women dies during pregnancy or childbirth, and one in 8 Nigerian children dies before their fifth birthday. And Nigeria is not alone. The global realities are equally devastating – nearly three million newborn babies die annually, and 800 women die in childbirth every single day. That means that two women will die by the time you finish reading this article – assuming you read fast. While the numbers are shocking, it’s even more horrifying to realize that nearly 90% of these deaths are avoidable: women, newborns, and young children die from preventable conditions like hemorrhage...