Staff at some South African hospitals forced pregnant HIV-positive women into sterilization after giving birth. The Commission for Gender Equality confirmed 48 cases in 2015 where women signed consent forms for sterilization procedures under duress. The country has one of…
Through efforts like Family Planning 2020, contraception has become a focal point of global health initiatives. But uptake is uneven across age groups. A new JAMA study found that the prevalence of unmet need for family planning was 50.8% among adolescents (ages 15-19…
At 49%, Indonesia’s rate of female circumcision is the third highest in the world—despite laws banning the practice. What keeps it going? In Indonesia, female genital mutilation is rooted as much in family tradition as in religion, according to new research from Gajah…
Compared to white women, American Indian and Alaska Natives are more than 2X as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes. And Native women in urban areas—where there’s better access to care—fare no better than those on rural reservations.
In a fresh push to end FGM by 2030, WHO launched a new tool today that calculates the cost of the practice, marking the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, UN News reports.
America’s tragic racial inequity in maternal mortality is baked into health systems and will take time, legislative lobbying, and structural change to uproot. In the meantime, birth workers are doubling down to support black birthing families. SELF profiled 8 of them,…
In a worrisome trend, mother-to-child transmission of HIV have been creeping back in a handful of countries over the last 18 months—jeopardizing prog
The toll of intimate partner violence on breastfeeding is rarely considered, much less researched.
When I was 3, India opened up its economy, bringing in companies from around the world. Everything changed. As a baby, I had cloth diapers. My younger brother wore disposable diapers.
At the only government hospital in Liberia’s Grand Bassa county, women in labor are dying because their families can’t afford to fuel hospital ambulances—and neither can the hospital. Amid the fuel and supply shortages, patients have been advised to seek care in the…
