In June 2012, along with a team from IPC, I visited a client in Sector 5 F, Karachi. A young mother of five children, she had been contacted by an outreach worker from Greenstar, and encouraged to seek family planning support from a nearby Greenstar clinic. With encouragement and information from the outreach worker and the health service provider at the Greenstar clinic, she had adopted the PPIUCD method. Although this young client was facing serious financial difficulties in life, and working as a cleaning lady at the same time as looking after her children, her defiance, resilience – and desire to make life better for herself and her family – caught the attention of the outreach worker Tasleem. This client became “Sitara”- the “star”, and symbolic of many women in Pakistan. Her story featured in the second issue of “Voice of Sitara”.

May 17, 2013

An estimated 14,000 villagers from 20 communities in Niger participated in a public vow to end Female Genital Mutilation and forced underage marriage. From Reuters:

Though Niger outlawed the practice in 2003, FGM and other violent treatment of young women remain prevalent among some ethnic groups in the impoverished Sahel nation, which ranks bottom of the United Nations’ world development index.

At a ceremony in Makalondi, about 85 km (53 miles) west of the capital Niamey, villagers threw scissors, knives and blades into a pit in the village square which was then filled in.

Participants in the ceremony, sponsored by Niger’s government and non-governmental groups including U.N. child agency UNICEF, also vowed to end forced early marriages and the removal of young girls from schools.

About 38 percent of girls in Niger are married off before the age of 15, according to official statistics.

Niger’s minister for population, women and child protection, said the government was determined to end such practices.

“The government is aware of its responsibilities,” Maikibi Kadidiatou Dan Dobi said during the ceremony on Wednesday.

FGM is the partial or total removal of external female genitalia and leads to physical and psychological problems including painful sex and childbirth, infections, infertility and incontinence.

It is done for religious and cultural reasons and is prevalent in 28 African nations and parts of the Middle East and Asia, notably Yemen, Iraqi Kurdistan and Indonesia.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in December urging countries to ban the practice, calling it an “irreparable, irreversible abuse” that threatens about three million girls annually.

The World Health Organization estimates 140 million girls and women have undergone FGM.

In Niger, the practice is still common among certain ethnic groups such as the Gourmantche where about 65 percent of girls have undergone FGM. The rate is around 13 percent among the Peuls and about 3 percent among Nigerien Arab girls.

NPR featured a story over the weekend on reducing infant mortality. Host Rachel Martin speaks with DC nurse Mindy Greenside and Michael Fraser, CEO for the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs. The two stress the importance of prenatal care in preventing child deaths.

Martin also spoke with Save the Children CEO Carolyn Miles following the release of the organizations global report on mothers.

CAROLYN MILES: Shockingly, about 11,000 moms lose their babies on the first day of life.

MARTIN: Carolyn Miles is the group’s president and CEO. And she says the group found that the U.S. really struggles with keeping newborns healthy immediately after birth.

MILES: Particularly in this first day, the U.S. is actually worse than all the other industrialized countries put together.

Procter & Gamble’s flagship social initiative has helped save the lives of 30,000 children globally. Katharine Earley explores how the firm is using the program to engage consumers and meet its goals. This originally appears on 2 Degrees Network here.

As the global water crisis intensifies, some 780 million people lack access to safe water, while nearly 2,000 children under the age of five die from water and sanitation-related diarrheal diseases every day.

That is more than from HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.

Increasingly, major companies are tackling fundamental health and development issues, including safe drinking water, as they move beyond cutting their own impacts to make a positive contribution to society.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) is one such company. As a global manufacturer of everyday products, the $84bn consumer goods giant sees its responsibility very clearly as helping people to take small steps to improve their everyday lives.

Committing time, funds and resource to addressing sustainable development issues also represents an investment in future markets.

By Beth Skorochod, Senior Technical Advisor, Sexual Reproductive Health and TB Department, Population Services International

Pililani Julius is twenty-three years old, from Mtambalika village in the Mulanje district of Malawi. Already the mother of two children, Pililani recently lost her third child, a death likely due to pediatric HIV complications. At the time, Pililani did not know that she was HIV positive — meaning that she was unable to take life-saving treatment that could have prevented transmission to her baby.

Today, Pililani is pregnant with her fourth child — and, this time, she is armed with knowledge. Prior to becoming pregnant, Pililani and her husband had watched an open-air drama performance run by PSI/Malawi, which explained the importance of knowing one’s HIV status and of taking treatment to prevent transmission during pregnancy. Pililani and her husband are now on treatment, protecting their own health and future as well as that of the new baby on the way.

Pililani’s story is an important and hopeful reminder of one of the global health community’s greatest success stories: the prevention, and hopefully, soon-to-be elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Today, thanks to the combined efforts of governments, companies, NGOs, health professionals, researchers and everyday volunteers, more children are born free of HIV than ever before.