Sexual and Reproductive Health with Isaac Eranga

The renewed Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health 2015 is to be a roadmap for ending all preventable deaths of women, children, and adolescents by 2030 and improving their overall health and well-being. The renewed Strategy will support the achievement of women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health- related post-2015 ”Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs), moving beyond reductions in mortality to a vision of healthy life for all through the life-course. The renewed strategy is being developed by a wide range of national, regional and global stakeholders with strong leadership and technical support from WHO under the umbrella of EWEC and the UN Secretary-General. WHO Assistant Director-General, Dr Flavia Bustreo sits on the overarching Strategy and Coordination Group and leads the writing team that will collect and synthesize inputs from a wide range of stakeholders to develop the first and subsequent drafts of the strategy. Technical

LONDON —Today, Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) released its second progress report detailing achievements since the landmark 2012 London Summit on Family Planning. The report, Partnership in Progress, shows the initiative is making steady progress toward its goal of enabling an additional 120 million women and girls in the world’s 69 poorest countries with access to voluntary family planning information, services and supplies by 2020. The report includes the first set of quantitative results on several core indicators designed to track progress toward the FP2020 goal. Notably, in 2013 the number of women and girls using modern contraceptives in FP2020’s 69 focus countries increased by 8.4 million. Expanded access to family planning helped avert 77 million unintended pregnancies, compared to 75 million in 2012; 125,000 maternal deaths, compared to 120,000 in 2012; and 24 million unsafe abortions, compared to 23 million in 2012. “Deciding about pregnancy should be by choice, not

UNITED NATIONS, New York, 12 February 2015—More than $56 million is urgently needed to provide vital reproductive, maternal and newborn health services in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. This amount, according to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, will cover the initial six months of the UNFPA-led Mano River Midwifery initiative—a new Ebola-response effort that would increase the number of health workers to ensure that women and girls of childbearing age stay healthy and safe despite the crisis. The funds will also cover the cost of contact-tracing to identify all potential contacts of Ebola cases and help prevent infections. More than 1.1 million women in the three countries are projected to give birth in Ebola-affected regions this year, according to UNFPA estimates, and all require antenatal, childbirth, postnatal and emergency obstetric care. However, many pregnant women are afraid to visit, or are turned away from, overstretched health facilities. Gains in mat

UNITED NATIONS, New York, 12 February 2015—More than $56 million is urgently needed to provide vital reproductive, maternal and newborn health services in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. This amount, according to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, will cover the initial six months of the UNFPA-led Mano River Midwifery initiative—a new Ebola-response effort that would increase the number of health workers to ensure that women and girls of childbearing age stay healthy and safe despite the crisis. The funds will also cover the cost of contact-tracing to identify all potential contacts of Ebola cases and help prevent infections. More than 1.1 million women in the three countries are projected to give birth in Ebola-affected regions this year, according to UNFPA estimates, and all require antenatal, childbirth, postnatal and emergency obstetric care. However, many pregnant women are afraid to visit, or are turned away from, overstretched health facilities. Gains in mat

On February 24th, Women Deliver Founder & President, Jill Sheffield will be a featured speaker at the Family of Woman Film Festival’s Bonni Curran Memorial Lecture on the Health and Dignity of Women . The festival was founded by Peggy Elliot Goldwyn in 2008 to bring attention to the issues confronting women and girls around the world – issues that are at the heart of Women Deliver’s mission.  Running from February 23rd until March 1st, this year’s theme is “Women and Their Dreams.” Goldwyn and Stephanie Freid-Perenchio, a documentary photographer and co- chair of the festival, believe that the best way to raise awareness of the global challenges facing women and girls is through the telling of personal stories that resonate with audiences. The festival features five outstanding documentaries and dramas from filmmakers around the world, which all spotlight exceptional girls and women, and their struggles to realize their true potential. The films tell inspiring sto

January 19th, 2015 By: Emily Mello, Women Deliver When you invest in girls and women, everybody wins. Here at Women Deliver, we can’t say that enough. Economically empowered women not only r aise t he labor productivity of their countries, but also spend more of their earned income on their families . Hindustan UniLever Limited ( HUL ), India’s largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods Company, is applying this principle through Project Shakti . This entrepreneurial program offers rural women microgrants to become distributors of the company’s health and hygiene products. Project Shakti follows a ‘Doing Well by Doing Good’ model , aiming to meet both business and societal needs through the same initiative. The project selects and trains rural women from poor economic backgrounds to be Shakti Entrepreneurs (SEs). In addition to basic business management training, SEs receive tools to boost sales, including bicycles and mobile

December 9th, 2014 Originally posted by Family Planning 2020 Five new commitments to Family Planning 2020 will improve health and drive economic development in the world’s poorest countries. Family Planning 2020 also announces Rights and Empowerment Principles for Family Planning. Washington, DC – December 9, 2014: Family Planning 2020 (FP2020), the global partnership dedicated to improving access to family planning information, services and supplies, today announced three additional African nations – Burundi, Cameroon and Togo – made commitments that will enable more women to decide, freely and for themselves, whether and when to have children. The new additions increased the total number of focus countries making pledges to FP2020 to 32. Further commitments to support the achievement of FP2020’s goal through funding and programming were made by The Brush Foundation and EngenderHealth. FP2020 worked with a range