Publication: Gender, climate change and health

In this discussion paper from WHO, available information on the differential links between climate change and the health of women and men has been collated and analyzed through the perspectives of: (a) direct and indirect health consequences; and, (b) the possible interaction of biological and social risk factors in determining these impacts. The overall aim of this work is to provide a framework for gendered health risk assessment and adaptation/mitigation actions in relation to climate change.

This framework is intended to strengthen WHO support to Member States in their activities to develop standardized country-level health risk assessments and climate policy interventions that are beneficial to both women and men.

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Event (DC): Frontline Innovations in Maternal Health Care; Meeting Africa’s Urgent Need for Skilled Midwifery and Fistula Repair

The International Center for Research on Women and AMREF
are pleased to present a seminar on

The provision of effective maternal health care has very clear health system requirements. The first is that community health care facilities must function and provide the basic services that save mother and newborn lives, including skilled staff, essential commodities and regular supervision from the district level. The second is linkages to a functioning referral system to ensure that women get appropriate care in the event of complications.

AMREF’s recent review and extensive experience supporting management of health services in East Africa indicate that these elements are not yet adequately addressed in existing health systems. In response, AMREF has crafted three strategies to address this urgent need: working with government to revitalize community health centers, creating virtual approaches for upgrading the skills of nurses and midwives, and strengthening regional capacity for the treatment of fistula. Speakers will discuss the response focusing on this strategic approach.

When:
Thursday, June 10, 2010, 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Where:
International Center for Research on Women
1120 20th St N.W., Suite 500 North
Washington, D.C. 20036

Speakers:
Dr. John Nduba, director, reproductive and child health, AMREF
Ms. Angela Nguku, coordinator, virtual nursing training school, AMREF
Dr. Weston Khisa, project manager, regional fistula repair project, AMREF

Please RSVP to Sherla Allen, sallen@icrw.org by Tuesday, June 8.

News: Motherhood: Norway Tops List of the Best Places to Be a Mother; Afghanistan Rates Worst

Norway is the best country in the world in which to be a new mother, followed by Australia, according to Save the Children’s annual State of the World’s Mothers report, issued this month. Afghanistan was at the bottom of the 160 countries listed. The United States did not fare well; it was 28th, below Greece, Portugal and virtually all of Western Europe. It ranked just above Poland and most of the former Soviet bloc.

The chief reason for the low American ranking, the authors said, was that despite advanced medical technology, more young mothers die, either in childbirth or in the years after, than in most rich countries. The United States also lost points because American working mothers get less maternity leave and lower benefits. Among middle-income countries, Cuba ranked highest, outdoing many wealthier countries. Despite its poverty, Cuba trains many doctors.

The most important factor in how mothers and babies fared in very poor countries was whether or not a female health worker helped at the birth. Since many men refuse to let their wives be seen by male doctors and many grandmothers give dangerous traditional advice, trained midwives can save lives, the authors said. After Afghanistan, the worst countries were Niger, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Sudan; many are conservative Muslim countries where education for girls is discouraged.

Source: NY TIMES By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Event:Tackling HIV related Stigma and Discrimination in South Asia Lessons Learned

The World Bank South Asia AIDS Team & ICRW invite you to attend the following event at the 37th annual Global Health Council Conference on International Health

Tackling HIV related Stigma and Discrimination in South Asia: Lessons Learned

When: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Although HIV prevalence in South Asia is low overall, HIV is still on the rise among vulnerable and often marginalized groups such as sex workers and their clients, injecting drug users and their partners, and men having sex with men who are particularly at risk for HIV. Stigma and other barriers impede efforts to reach those most in need of prevention, care and treatment services. A competitive grants program, “The South Asia Regional Development Marketplace: Tackling Stigma and Discrimination,” supported innovative approaches for reducing stigma and discrimination in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, engaging a broad spectrum of marginalized groups, the media and religious leaders.

RSVP by May 28 to Laura Brady at lbrady@icrw.org or 202-742-1232.

News: Food or Cash? New IFPRI study assesses the effectiveness of transfer programs

What makes a more effective social safety net program: transfers of food, or cash? The question is hardly academic. Governments, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations must decide whether to provide the world’s poorest people with cash, food, or a mixture of the two. In recent years, many have begun favoring cash transfers over food aid. Cash transfers are cheaper, require less administrative capacity, and allow poor households to decide how the money is spent. But are they always the most effective means of improving the lives and livelihoods of the ultra-poor?

Researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) studied four programs that provided food, cash, or a combination of food and cash to very poor communities in Bangladesh. They compared the programs’ effectiveness at improving the food security and livelihoods of particularly vulnerable populations, and considered how the benefits were divided among men, women, and children within households. They found that cash transfers were more successful at producing certain outcomes, while food transfers were best for achieving others.

For example, when the goal was women’s empowerment, cash payments to women were most effective at improving their ability to make decisions and mobilize household assets. This was particularly so when the payments came in the form of wages paid to participants in public works programs. For sustained poverty relief, those programs that combined food or cash transfers with access to credit or savings requirements had the greatest impact.

However, many women said they preferred food transfers to cash, citing worries that their husbands would spend the money on non-food items. The study found that when women’s nutrition was the objective, transfers of atta (whole wheat flour), as opposed to rice, were preferable. Because atta is considered less desirable than rice, less of it was stolen in transit and women consumed more than they did when transfers were given in the form of rice. Atta was also more easily enriched with other nutrients.

Researchers concluded that cash and food transfer programs should be designed in line with goals such as cost-effectiveness, nutritional impact, gender-specific outcomes, and long-term poverty reduction.

The IFPRI research monograph, Comparing Food and Cash Transfers to the Ultra Poor in Bangladesh, encourages policymakers to consider the specific objectives of social safety net programs before assuming that food or cash is always the answer.

Source: Zunia

Fellowship: KENYAN FELLOWSHIP ON “POPULATION-ENVIRONMENT” AVAILABLE

The Green Belt Movement (GBM) and Center for Environment and Population (CEP) 2010 Fellowship

Introduction: The Green Belt Movement is collaborating with the Center for Environment and Population (CEP) to host a University/graduate level paid Fellowship in Nairobi, Kenya beginning June 2010 for up to 8 months to: a) help the Green Belt Movement determine how population factors, reproductive health, and women/girls empowerment/education issues are linked to its traditional approach to conservation and development; b) look at how the GBM would move these linkages forward, and what the strategy would be, in the context of the GBM’s vision for the organization, and; c) help the GBM explore how it might integrate these issues into their traditional approach.

News: Maternal Health A New Study Challenges Benefits of Vitamin A for Women and Babies

Giving women vitamin A capsules did not save their lives or the lives of their new babies, according to a surprising new study from Ghana reported this week by the medical journal Lancet.

The results contradicted an earlier study in Nepal that showed a huge drop in deaths among child-bearing women taking vitamin A, and disappointed experts who hoped pills could be a cheap, easy lifesaver. Scientists did establish in the 1980s that giving vitamin A to malnourished children prevented stunting and deaths from measles and diarrhea.

The 1999 study in Nepal suggested the vitamin also saved young mothers, although that result was regarded somewhat skeptically because so many of the women had died of unrelated causes, including burns, drowning, snakebite and hanging.

Writing in a Lancet commentary, Anthony Costello and David Osrin of the global health institute of University College London noted that the new study recruited an “astonishing” number of women — nearly 208,000 in more than 1,000 villages or family compounds.

Half got a weekly low dose of vitamin A, and half got a placebo. Few in either group died, but the vitamin also did not reduce hospitalization for childbirth complications. Nor did it reduce stillbirths or deaths of newborns. Recent trials in Bangladesh and Indonesia had similar results.

Finding ways to get more food to young women might be more effective than getting them vitamin pills, the commentary’s authors said.

Source: NY TimesBy DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Employment: Community Mobilization and Gender Specialist

Maxwell Stamp Ltd, BANGLADESH; Apply By: 03 May 2010; Indonesia | Senior-level

Three (3) community mobilization and gender specialists will be recruited. One will be posted in each city. S/he will have a graduate degree in communication, with postgraduate qualification in public relation, advocacy or planning. S/he shall have at least 10 years work experience, and skills in mobilizing communities, conducting focus-group discussions, and assessing stakeholder needs and expectations, particularly of women. S/he shall also have the
ability to prepare strategic communications plans and monitoring reports, and have some background in effective behavioral change communication strategies. S/he will work closely with the hygiene and sanitation specialist, and will ensure plans developed are gender sensitive and provide equal opportunities for men and women in sanitation management and health activities.

For more information

Resources: (English & French) A Practical Guide to Integrating Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS into Grant Proposals to the Global Fund

Karen Hardee, Jill Gay and Elisha Dunn-Georgiou

Integrating RH and HIV can greatly contribute to mitigating the AIDS pandemic by reducing unintended pregnancy; preventing perinatal transmission; expanding to more target groups; reducing gender based violence; meeting the needs of people living with HIV and providing our youth with the knowledge and services they need. Whether to integrate, how to integrate and exactly what to integrate will depend on a country’s epidemiological profile, policies and program structures.

Experience with implementation of integration initiatives in countries around the world shows that scale up and sustainability requires attention to policy and program operations issues. This document, with links to a range of resources, will help CCMs, civil society organizations and others developing proposals for the Global Fund that contribute to preventing HIV and mitigating the effects of the AIDS pandemic through programs that link and integrate RH and HIV/AIDS.

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Publication: Nutritional supplementation in girls influences the growth of their children: prospective study in Guatemala

Jere R Behrman, Maria C Calderon, Samuel H Preston, John Hoddinott, Reynaldo Martorell and Aryeh D Stein

Background: Better early childhood nutrition improves schooling, adult health, skills, and wages, but there is little evidence regarding its effect on the next generation.

Objective: We assessed whether nutritional supplementation in children aged <7 to 15 y affected their children’s nutritional status 29–38 y later.

Design: We studied 791 children 0–12 y who were offspring of 401 Guatemalan women who had participated as children in a nutritional supplementation trial in which 2 villages were randomly assigned to receive a nutritious supplement (atole) and 2 were assigned to receive a less-nutritious supplement (fresco). We compared anthropometric indicators between the offspring of mothers exposed to atole and the offspring of mothers exposed to fresco.

Results: Compared with the offspring of women exposed to fresco, the offspring of women exposed to atole had a 116-g (95% CI: 17, 215 g) higher birth weight, were 1.3-cm (0.4, 2.2 cm) taller, had a 0.6-cm (0.4, 0.9 cm) greater head circumference, had a 0.26 (0.09, 0.43) greater height-for-age z score, and had a 0.20 (0.02, 0.39) greater weight-for-age z score. The association for height differed by offspring sex. Sons of women exposed to atole were 2.0-cm (95% CI: 1.0, 3.1 cm) taller than the sons of women exposed to fresco. Supplementation was not associated with 6 other offspring anthropometric indicators that reflect measures of adiposity. Supplementation in boys did not affect their children’s anthropometric measures.

Conclusion: Nutritional supplementation in girls is associated with substantial increases in their offsprings’ (more for sons) birth weight, height, head circumference, height-for-age z score, and weight-for-age z score.

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