The maternal mortality ratio is unacceptably high in Africa. Forty per cent of all pregnancy-related deaths worldwide occur in Africa. On average, over 7 women die per 1,000 live births. About 22,000 African women die each year from unsafe abortion, reflecting a high unmet need for contraception. Contraceptive use among women in union varies from 50 per cent in the southern sub-region to less than 10 per cent in middle and western Africa" UNFPA
Early and unwanted childbearing, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and pregnancy-related illnesses and deaths account for a significant proportion of the burden of illness experienced by women in Africa. Gender-based violence is an influential factor negatively impacting on the sexual and reproductive health of one in every three women. Many are unable to control decisions to have sex or to negotiate safer sexual practices, placing them at great risk of disease and health complications.
According to UNAIDS, there is an estimated of 22.2 million people living with HIV in Sub-Saharan African in 2009, which represents 68% of the global HIV burden. Women are at higher risk than men to be infected by HIV, their vulnerability remains particulary high in the Sub-Saharan Africa and 76% of all HIV women in the world live in this region.
In almost all countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, the majority of people living with HIV are women, especially girls and women aged between 15-24. Not only are women more likely to become infected, they are more severely affected. Their income is likely to fall if an adult man loses his job and dies. Since formal support to women are very limited, they may have to give up some income-genrating activities or sacrifice school to take care of the sick relatives.
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SOURCE: All Africa
About 200,000 women in Nigeria are living with Vesicular Vaginal Festula (VVF) complications, Dr Habibu M. Sadauki, country project manager of the Festula Care Plus Project, said yesterday.
Dr. Sadauki stated this yesterday in Kano, while presenting a paper at a meeting with media practitioners. He said the Northwest has the highest number of patients followed by the North-east, noting that 12,000 cases of VVF are being received annually at 13 different centers across the country.
Source: The New Times
Maintaining hygiene and feeding children under five on food rich in proteins and vitamins is the best way to reduce child mortality in local communities, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, Henriette Umulisa, has said.
Source: All Africa
The Ministry of Health called on stakeholders to exert more efforts to achieve health sector Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by reducing maternal and child mortality rate.
Source: All Africa
The queen of Buganda, Nnabagereka Sylvia Nagginda, has decried the high number of maternal deaths and HIV prevalence among mothers in Kayunga District.
Source: Daily Monitor
Stakeholders in health service delivery in South Western Uganda have noted that without deliberate involvement and targeting of other key stakeholders in tackling reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, government efforts to reverse the trend of maternal and child deaths will never achieve a remarkable progress.
Source: Mail & Guardian Africa
LOCAL doctors told Aida Abdulla her chest pain was an infection, arthritis or muscle strain. But when she travelled to a hospital in Khartoum months later she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Source: All Africa
The Ministry of Health said Ethiopia has registered better results in reducing maternal, child mortality in GTP I period.
Source: All Africa
The U. N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Fistula Program has graduated 20 Fistula survivors in Suakoko, Bong County following six months of rehabilitation and training in various livelihood initiatives.
Source: All Africa
Public Relations Officer in the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology yesterday stated that about 50% to 60% of girls that are currently pregnant are those who do not want to be in the school system.
SOURCE: All Africa
Sometimes the technical words we use to describe a problem mask its true nature.
Such is the case for the hundreds of thousands of women who die during pregnancy or delivery each year across Africa. For them, the official cause of death may be recorded as postpartum hemorrhage or uterine rupture. Similarly, for the alarming number of newborns who perish, their mothers may be informed the cause was asphyxia or birth trauma.
Yet in each of these cases, the underlying cause of death is actually something far more fundamental: lack of access to basic health care. The vast majority of the mothers and newborns who die in Africa are lost to preventable health problems. They would have survived had they lived in a wealthier community with more doctors, hospitals and resources.
Unfortunately, this picture is representative of a much larger crisis in maternal and newborn health. According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 800 women worldwide die each day of preventable complications related to pregnancy and delivery. And every day, 7,400 newborns die, most also from avoidable causes.
It is a gross injustice whenever the joyous occasion of birth instead is a preventable death. But there is reason for optimism. Over the past generation, global efforts have significantly reduced maternal mortality, and newborn deaths have declined as well.
New data released this week confirm that countries across Africa are making progress battling maternal and newborn mortality. For example, since 1990, Rwanda has reduced maternal mortality by more than 75%. Further, since 1990, several African countries including Rwanda, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda have reduced under-five mortality by more than half.
Progress comes at an important time. Last month, world leaders gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York to adopt an ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals for eliminating extreme poverty and building a prosperous, healthy planet. These goals, which call specifically for further reductions in maternal and newborn deaths, have the potential to accelerate progress even further if we stay focused on what works to save lives.
Simple interventions go a long way. These include exclusive breast-feeding, keeping a newborn's umbilical cord wound clean and dry to prevent infection, and promoting skin-to-skin contact between newborns and their mothers to regulate the baby's body temperature and breathing.
Meeting women's health needs is just as important, and a newborn's well-being is closely tied to her mother's. Providing women with greater access to family planning and other essential services, as well as nutritious food, can help to ensure that women and their children stay healthy and strong enough to contribute to the development of their families and communities.
We also need to help countries strengthen their primary health care systems so that more women and newborns have access to quality services and vital medicines before, during and after delivery. Countries and international donors can do this by increasing funding levels for primary health care, collecting better data on where gaps in services are greatest and by training more front-line health workers to deliver basic education and care to people and places that have little or none.
If we take these steps, I believe that we can end most preventable maternal and newborn deaths — as well as eliminate the health disparities within and among countries so that every child has the chance to prosper — within a single generation.
This is the message I took with me to Mexico City this week, as experts from around the world came together to discuss how to align their efforts at the Global Maternal Newborn Health Conference.
While in Mexico, I thought about young women like Sarah Briton, who I met recently in Malawi after she gave birth to her first child, a healthy baby boy.
Late in her third trimester, Sarah made the five-hour journey to Malawi's capital city, Lilongwe, where she could stay in a home near a women's clinic to ensure that she and her baby had access to lifesaving care when she went into labor.
Sarah wasn't willing to accept the idea that her and her baby's lives could be cut short simply because they were born in extreme poverty. She knows that progress is possible, and she's ready for it to begin with her and her family.
Many women across Africa undoubtedly share Sarah's story. If we're willing to match their commitment with our own, we can help guarantee a healthier, brighter future for women and children everywhere.
Source: Ventures Africa
Motivated by a group of bio-medical, engineering and business students from Newcastle University, women and teenage girls in rural Dufatanye in Rwanda, are beginning to adopt the use of banana made sanitary pads.