Sexual and Reproductive Health with Isaac Eranga

Many women plan to get pregnant, but what about those who don’t want kids at the moment? Now, there’s an app for that. By NICOLE ORAN  There are many mobile applications already on the market that allow women to track their menstrual cycles, either for simple regulation, monitoring purposes, or there are those aimed toward women who are specifically trying to get pregnant. There aren’t many designed for pregnancy prevention. Cycle Technologies has been focused on women’s reproductive health since it was founded by Leslie Heyer in 2002. The company’s newest free iOS app, DOT, which is out today via iTunes, uses Dynamic Optimal Timing technology. It does what the others on the market do as well, but what makes it stand out is that it’s also designed for those who don’t want to get pregnant. They might not be using contraceptive methods for various reasons but still want to be proactive about monitoring that risk. When a woman uses DOT, she can specify from the beginning what her g

 In our culture, reproduction is often seen as women’s work. From pregnancy to childbirth through nursing a newborn child, women are often expected to take the central role in creating new life by default. Similarly, when problems of infertility arise, the focus is often slanted toward females.  But getting pregnant takes two, as Mike Huang is acutely aware. Huang is the CEO of Glow, a company which nearly two years ago launched an eponymous reproductive health app with help from big-name backer Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder. Until today, Glow was designed exclusively to help women either avoid a pregnancy or get pregnant. The app offers women insight on good habits to practice while they’re expecting and provides support during difficult times, such as miscarriage and the postpartum period.  Now, after addressing a mother’s journey to parenthood, Huang and his team are rounding out Glow with an essential new component: support for male fertility. “Men’s reproductive health p

 It’s happened at the last two parties I’ve gone to in the Bay Area: At a certain point in the evening, a group of women ends up sitting together, forming a slightly closed-off circle. Maybe a single dude is hanging around, standing at the periphery. He’ll interject once in a while, but there’s not much he can add here: It’s time to talk birth control. Those NuvaRing commercials where a gaggle of girl pals trades info about insertion and ease of use come off cloying and cliche, but … man. They’re not totally off the mark. These conversations happen everywhere, and they reflect a big gap in information available about birth control methods. Ninety-eight percent of women in the United States will use some form of birth control during their lives, and with a rapidly expanding field of methods—IUDs and condoms and implants and pills and rings and dear God what is that spongy thing—the pros and cons are becoming much more complicated to parse. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Good

Every morning, I pee in a cup. Before I do anything else pick up my toddler daughter, pet my dog, even fully open my eyes — I collect a sample of urine, soak a swab in it for fifteen seconds, stick the swab in a machine, and wait five minutes for a beep. Nothing can make you more obsessed with science and technology than the biological imperative to reproduce. And nothing makes fulfilling that imperative more difficult than your own body. For the first two weeks of the menstrual cycle, a woman’s ovary grows an egg. When the egg is mature, it leaves the ovary and travels through the fallopian tube to the uterus. This process is known as ovulation.  You’re most fertile in the two to three days before ovulation. But pinpointing that window is a difficult — and, OK, sometimes gross — affair. Methods like my fertility monitor or ovulation predictor kits rely on detecting estrogen and luteinizing hormone in urine. A sudden rise of LH triggers ovulation Nothing can make you more obses

Janet Reno, the first female attorney general of the United States, has died of complications from Parkinson’s disease, relatives told the AP and CNN.   She was 78.    A graduate of Harvard Law School, Reno became attorney general under President Bill Clinton in 1993. She ran the Justice Department during some of the administration’s most prominent controversies, including the raid of a Waco, Texas, cult compound that left over 80 people dead and the decision to return 6-year-old Elián González to his father in Cuba. Reno was also caught in the crosshairs of many of Clinton’s personal legal troubles.  But Reno’s career wasn’t only defined by scandal. The longest-serving attorney general of the 20th century, she was a staunch advocate for women’s rights and pushed Congress to pass stronger laws protecting abortion seekers and providers. “I think we should do everything we can under federal law to protect a woman’s right to choose from physical restraints that people would try to

Posted by Isaac Eranga Maiduguri - An emergency polio vaccination campaign aimed at reaching 25 million children this year has begun in parts of Nigeria newly freed from Boko Haram Islamic extremists, with fears that many more cases of the crippling disease will likely be found. Two toddlers discovered last month were Nigeria's first reported polio cases in more than two years, putting the world on alert just months after the African continent was declared free of the disease. One member of the Rotary Club's "End Polio Now" drive said he almost cried when he got the news. It was a major blow to global efforts to stamp out polio, which persists in only two other countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Associated Press joined the vaccination drive in northeastern Nigeria, a campaign going to extraordinary lengths to fight the disease in areas still threatened by Boko Haram extremists who violently oppose Western medicine. Health workers using military helicopters,

The Lagos State Government has reiterated its resolve to continue with the implementation of activities and strategies geared towards the reduction of maternal and child deaths in the State through its Maternal and Child Mortality Reduction Programme, the Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Primary Health Care, Dr. Olufemi Onanuga has said. ‎ Onanuga, who made this known to signal commencement of activities for the implementation of the first round of year 2016 Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Week (MNCH) celebration in Lagos, noted that the state government would not rest on its oars at ensuring that preventive measures against maternal and child deaths are embraced and adequate care for maternal and child health are available.