KAMPALA, Jul 28 2010 (IPS) – During the three-day summit of African Union heads of state, roughly 37,000 children and 2,000 women died across Africa, mostly from preventable causes, says a civil society coalition for child and maternal health. The coalition welcomed African leaders pledge to make more resources available.
Govt hospital in Sierra Leone: civil society will watch to s…
Poindexter Sama and Jessica McDiarmid
FREETOWN, Jun 20 2011 (IPS) – There is a brief bustle and then a woman wails as the small body is wrapped in cloth and set on a cot by the door of the paediatric ward. Nurses in pristine white uniforms continue to pad quietly around the large room at Ola During Children s Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone s capital city.
Infants are crammed two or three to a bed, sometimes more. Since the introduction nearly 14 months ago of free health care for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under five, the number of people coming to seek treatment has shot up. Staffing and equipment has not risen to match, leaving health workers struggling to deal with the influx.
Sierra Leone s ambitious plan to tackle one of the world s highes…
Women wait to immunize their children at the Kisugu Health Centre in Kampala, Uganda, where free vaccinations take place. The nurse in the foreground is Betty Makakeeto. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS
KAMPALA, Jun 29 2016 (IPS) – Patience*, a Ugandan maid, planned on taking her three-year-old son for polio immunization during the country’s mass campaigns a year ago, until her landlord’s wife told her a shocking myth.
“The medicine they are injecting them with means the boy whe…
Dr. Hanif Hassan Al Qassim, is Chairman of the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue
GENEVA, Jun 4 2017 (IPS) – On 20 February 1997, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 51/77 to promote the rights of children. This Resolution was considered a milestone in promoting and advancing the right of children in conflict and wars.
Dr. Hanif Hassan Al Qassim
The resolution was also seen as a further acknowledgement of the growing number of States that had signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child that entered into force on 2 September 1990. To this day only one State has …
CANBERRA, Australia, Jun 12 2020 (IPS) – Prior to the onset of the coronavirus crisis South Asian women participated only sparingly in the labor market. Even though South Asia was and still has the potential to become one of the fastest growing regions in the world (post COVID19) female labor force participation rates were low at 23.6% compared to 80% for men (World Bank figures).
Raghbendra Jha
The principal reasons for low female labor participation rates are (i) relatively low literacy rates for women as compared to men1 although the gap between the two is falling and both rates are rising; (ii) gender norms that view household work as women’s work and work outside…
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern. Credit: Pictures in montage ©United Nations
DOMINICA, Sep 22 2021 (IPS) – On September 20, Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina accepted an award from the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network for her country’s ‘striking’ progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
That progress includes an adult literacy rate that jumped from 21 percent in 1981 to 75 percent in 2019 and a spike in access to electricity from 14 percent in 1991 to 92 percent today. The country has also dras…