Browse by Theme: Sexual Reproductive & Maternal Health

Complete this sentence, “Today, I’m worried about where I will get the money to buy _________.” What filled in the blank for you? A car? A meal? If you’re a refugee woman in Uganda, one answer is likely to be sanitary pads.

Today, at the 5th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Liverpool, UK, I’m presenting key learning from CARE’s highly successful and Global Good Award winning Private Community Skilled Birth Attendant (P-CSBA) programme in Bangladesh, part of CARE and GSK’s global partnership to train and support frontline health workers. Here are the top-line findings – and what they tell us about the potential of public-private partnerships.

Masuda, Shankori and Shilpi are entrepreneurial midwives who are improving health access in one of the most remote districts in Bangladesh, where maternal and under-5 mortality rates have fallen dramatically in recent years. These powerful women are also generating more income for their families and changing social norms. Having met them on a trip to Bangladesh, Kate Barwise considers what can be learned from their successes and how to support more women like them to help more communities.

When Theresa May welcomes Trump this week it seems like she won’t be short of conversation: there’s the World Cup, Brexit, and NATO before we even start. But with hundreds of thousands of people from all over the UK coming to join the Women’s March this Friday, a clear message is that women’s rights should be on the agenda.

By Alice Allan and Christina Wegs:

The Family Planning Summit, held in London on 11 July 2017, was a chance to re-energise support for global efforts to reach an additional 120 million women and girls with contraception information and services by 2020. Since the first Family Planning Summit in 2012, there has been progress towards that goal, with an additional 30.2 million women and girls able to have access to modern contraceptive methods. But there is still a long way to go and some major challenges to overcome – including the withdrawal of key donor funding from vital components of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights through the US government’s Global Gag Rule – the elephant in the room at the Summit.

Just past the halfway point of FP2020 – and looking towards next week’s Family Planning Summit – it’s time to celebrate and showcase progress towards our 2020 commitments but also crucially reflect on what more needs to be done to reach women and girls, especially in emergency settings.

On 11 July, the international Family Planning Summit will be held in London, hosted by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and UNFPA. One of the Summit’s four priority areas is on reaching the ‘hardest to reach’, including women and girls in humanitarian settings. But why is family planning in emergencies so crucial, and how can it be truly life-saving?