Reproductive Health – Page 5 – Global Reproductive Health at Duke

The Alarming Incidence of Unsafe Abortion Worldwide

October 5, 2018November 15, 2024 by Carly JonesNo Comments

Approximately 56 million abortions are performed globally each year, with half of these procedures falling upon some continuum of danger that they pose. 97% of these unsafe abortions are performed in low-income countries within Africa, Asia, and Latin America, illustrating the enormous reproductive health disparity borne by geographic location. Abortions are classified by the World Health Organization as “safe”, “less safe”, and “least safe.” Many abortions conducted in developing countries are qualified as “least safe,” characterized by the insertion of foreign objects such as sticks and broken glass bottles, or the ingestion of harmful cleaning products. Ultimately, 6.9 million women each year are treated for complications attributed to unsafe abortions, and 23,000 women die from such complications. Yet, safe abortion procedures such as manual evacuation and abortion-inducing drugs are not financially out of reach even for low-resource countries. Thus, the solution to this horrific lapse in reproductive health lies in political discourse. While some countries, such as Ethiopia and Nepal,...

Philippines to join its first World Contraception Day

September 21, 2018November 13, 2024 by Jessica WilliamsNo Comments

The Philippines announced Wednesday that it will be participating in the upcoming World Contraception Day on September 26th. In its first year joining the global campaign, the country will hold a forum at the University of the Philippines in Diliman to discuss the nation's treatment of reproductive health issues. With one of the world's fastest rates of population growth and a population that has tripled over the last fifty years, the Philippines faces a growing need of family-planning education; widespread awareness of safe and effective contraception methods may slow unsustainable population growth, with positive effects on public health, the economy and the environment. World Contraception Day is an international campaign, with the mission to educate younger generations about contraception so they can make informed decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. The Day is organized by a group of 17 international NGOs, governmental organizations, and medical societies, and is funded by Bayer AG. Held yearly since 2007, World Contraception Day envisions...

Innovative Ways for Women in Refugee Camps to Find Maternal Health Care

August 24, 2018November 13, 2024 by Emily WoodrowNo Comments

For women living in refugee camps, there is a lack of maternal health facilities on site and finding aid and safe transportation to offsite facilities can be very difficult. Often, refugee camps can be located in rural areas and or conflict zones causing a lack of specialized doctors close to the camp and security issues with traveling outside the camp such as attacks on ambulances. It is vital for a pregnant woman to be able to receive obstetric care in any emergency situation. In order to help refugee women find timely and quality care, mobile clinics and “mama taxis” have been installed in many camps to aid prenatal and postpartum healthcare. The UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) has led the development of mobile clinics which are “clinics on wheels” equipped with necessary medicines, tools, machines, doctors, nurses, etc. and can meet a woman in need so she does not have to travel around or leave a camp. With similar intentions,...

Community Health Campaign: Thoughts Station by Station

July 19, 2018November 12, 2024 by kb330@duke.eduNo Comments

Not much changes yet everything seems different whenever I return to my home country of Kenya. I was reminded of my first time in Kisumu last year with Dr. Megan Huchko & Katelyn Bryant-Comstock and how anxious I was, even though I was in Kenya, I was completely unfamiliar with this region, the local language, and the culture. Last year, I was a rising junior filled with high hopes, yet naïve of the intricacies of proposing a project and carrying it out. This year, I have returned with much more practical expectations as well as a greater capacity to carry out my project: using GIS spatial mapping to enumerate the risk of loss-to-follow up for treatment of HPV. My project is taking place in Migori, Kenya as a part of the ongoing Cervical Cancer Screening & Prevention Study. The use of geographic information systems will help us create correlations between women’s sociodemographic variables as risk-factors and treatment loss-to-follow up rates....

When words in Washington translate to tragedy across the globe

July 12, 2018November 12, 2024 by kb330@duke.eduNo Comments

When people ask how my summer internship is going, I never know what exactly to say. I usually end up blurting out a rapid mix of emotions: “It’s great!” “I love it!” “But it’s also really sad!” “Super depressing day to day, but I care a lot about the work.” “An awesome place to work but a sad field to be working in right now.” I’m interning at the United Nations Foundation in Washington, DC on the Universal Access Project, which convenes donors and advocates working to improve women’s and girls’ access to family planning around the world. Family planning is a fundamental human right and undeniably one of the best investments countries can make towards sustainable development—it can enable girls to stay in school, prevent maternal deaths, improve women’s financial independence and economic productivity, and has even been identified as a top solution to combat climate change. The Duke Center for Global Reproductive Health and other NGOs have reported frequently about...

So… what are you going to do about it?

July 5, 2018November 12, 2024 by kb330@duke.eduNo Comments

I’m currently in Amansie West, Ghana as part of a team conducting research on the barriers and facilitators to family planning use and the role community health workers play in family planning uptake. During this time, I was invited to attend Ghana Health Service’s first National Maternal, Child Health and Nutrition Conference by Millennium Promise, a co-sponsor of the conference and our collaborator in country. The collaboration with Millennium Promise first began back in September when Chief Nat Ebo Nsarko, the Country Director visited Duke University. From the beginning this team has been our guide for conducting research in Ghana through assisting us in each task and facilitating our learning experience. It is through their contributions and dedication which have allowed this research to not only be possible but successful. The theme of the conference was “Strengthening Partnerships for Achieving Universal Health Coverage in Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition.” Gladys Ghartey (Head of UN System Unit at...

Reproductive Health Victories

June 29, 2018November 12, 2024 by kb330@duke.eduNo Comments

This week has seen an onslaught of negative health news from the United States and around the world. Crisis pregnancy centers in the United States are now allowed to withhold legally available medical options, women in Guam no longer have access to abortion services, and we continue to see daily impacts from the reinstatement of the global gag rule and hear reports of lack of access to reproductive health services from women in refugee camps. It’s easy to get depressed from the seemingly impenetrable amount of work that needs to be done to protect the health and human rights of people around the world. But that’s exactly what we need to do. We need to dig deep, understand the depth of the problems, and develop new partnerships and solutions. I’d like to highlight some exciting news from this past week of just that: people digging deep and developing new solutions to positively impact the health and rights of people across the world. Preventing...

Bringing Multi-Purpose Prevention Technology Development into the Global Spotlight

May 14, 2018November 12, 2024 by kb330@duke.eduNo Comments

Multi-purpose prevention technologies (MPTs) are the future for female-driven sexually transmitted infection (STI) and unplanned pregnancy prevention. Although dozens of products are in the MPT development pipeline, including several at the final stages of clinical trials, progress in development has been slow, and investment paltry. In my last post, I discussed the technical and scientific barriers that are slowing down MPT research. Today I will highlight the comparable societal barriers, namely: lack of government willpower, widespread poor understanding of the depth and breadth of these health issues, and funding troubles. First, though HIV and unplanned pregnancies receive substantial attention in the fields of global health and development, other STIs tend to be much more overlooked. Fewer global health organizations conduct regular surveillance of non-HIV STIs, preventing more funding from going to their prevention. For instance, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2015 Report on global sexually transmitted infection surveillance reported an estimated 357.4 million new infections worldwide (roughly 1 million per...

What We’ve Been Up To and What’s Next

May 4, 2018November 12, 2024 by kb330@duke.eduNo Comments

It’s been a busy spring semester here at the Center for Global Reproductive Health. We opened the semester with the inaugural Global Reproductive Health Leadership Symposium which brought together ten east African researchers and over 25 Duke fellows, researchers and students for a three-day hands-on meeting at Duke. Attendees shared areas of research, participated in grant writing workshops, and received in-depth training on leadership and mentorship. One of the key events from the Symposium was a lunch session “How Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Can Impact Leadership Opportunities”. With a standing room only crowd, Lola Fayanju from general surgery, Nimmi Ramanujam from Pratt, and Provost Sally Kornbluth engaged in a lively discussion moderated by Kathy Sikkema on their career paths, decision points, and how they have defined themselves as leaders. They also shared key insights on what it felt like to be trailblazers in their respective fields. It was an incredible panel that brought together multiple different sectors and provided real-life context...

Why don’t we have more MPTs already?

May 2, 2018November 12, 2024 by kb330@duke.eduNo Comments

The term “multi-purpose prevention technologies” (MPTs) refers to any single technology that simultaneously protects users against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancy. As I discussed earlier this month, MPTs have recently garnered substantial attention and devotion from researchers, as well as a major increase in financial backing from donors. MPTs hold a tremendous potential to transform the lives of women everywhere, especially those in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where access to family planning and condoms for STI prevention can be a major challenge. Yet, despite innovative research and vast potential, the only MPTs currently on the market are still internal and external condoms. So, why haven’t more MPTs become available? At first glance, MPTs seem like a pretty simple concept—if a woman is already using a ring that emits drugs to prevent pregnancy, why not add in some prophylactic drugs that prevent HIV transmission as well? Yet, MPT research and development face a multitude of complex hurdles that need...

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