AMISOM Public Information/flickr
By Emma Batha
LONDON, Feb 6 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A growing trend for midwives and nurses to carry out female genital mutilation (FGM) is undermining global efforts to eradicate the internationally condemned practice, experts have warned.
Morissanda Kouyate head of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices called for courts to get tough on health workers convicted of carrying out FGM.
He also urged professional medical and health associations to expel members who repeatedly perform FGM.
"Medicalization is one of the biggest threats against the program to eliminate FGM," Kouyate told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Rome ahead of international FGM awareness day on Monday.
Authors: UNFPA and Engender Health
This guide is meant to provide guidance for those developing or managing a project or programme to engage men in sexual and reproductive health and rights. It emphasizes the importance of using a gender lens when planning and programming men’s engagement in sexual and reproductive health and rights, including family planning – which means engaging men as clients of sexual and reproductive health services, as supportive partners, and as agents of change.
This guide is based on the premise that gender norms and how men and women express them can affect their sexual and reproductive health behaviour. Likewise, the gender attitudes and beliefs held by programme staff and health-care providers (doctors, nurses, etc.) can have an impact on how they design programmes and how they provide services. Assessing, reflecting on and/or challenging gender norms should be a fundamental part of any intervention which seeks to improve sexual and reproductive health, including the involvement of men.
UNICEF/Pirozzi
New WHO and UNICEF-supported network to improve care for mothers and babies
Today, 9 countries – Bangladesh, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda – committed to halving preventable deaths of pregnant women and newborns in their health facilities within the next 5 years.
Through a new Network for Improving Quality of Care for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, supported by WHO, UNICEF and other partners, the countries will work to improve the quality of care mothers and babies receive in their health facilities.
This Network aims to strengthen national efforts to end preventable deaths by 2030, as envisioned by the Every Woman Every Child Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health. Countries will do that for example, by strengthening capacity and motivation of health professional to plan and manage quality improvement, improving data collection and increasing access to medicines, supplies, equipment and clean water.
