Reproductive Health Care
in Developing Countries

Bush again withholds money from Population Fund |MORE, a decision called "appalling" by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. |MORE

• “Women’s Health and Rights at a Crossroads – The Agenda for Our Next President”

  The $50 billion which the U.S. envisions spending over the next five years mostly in sub-Saharan Africa to support the President Bush’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (“PEPFAR”) is unwisely invested according to Adrienne Germain, President of International Women’s Health Coalition. She contends that PEPFAR fails to promote and protect the health of women and children. In Part 1 of “Women’s Health and Rights at a Crossroads – The Agenda for Our Next President” she unveils her vision of what our next President must do to help the U.S. regain its moral authority in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the developing world.

• Rethinking the AIDS Emergency and the U.S. Response

By Beth Fredrick
IWHC
April 7, 2008

[In April], the House [of Representtives] took a big step toward increasing the United States' commitment to ending the suffering caused by AIDS in Africa. It reauthorized the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS
Relief (PEPFAR), which will provide $50 billion over the next five years-the largest aid package from any country directed at a cluster of diseases -- HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria...

By the end of the five years, at the 10-year anniversary of PEPFAR, Americans will have provided $80 billion to this "emergency." Fast forward to 2013. If current trends continue, what will we have accomplished with the legislation currently under consideration?

• Greater access to anti-retroviral medication [but].
• Greater numbers of people living with HIV.|MORE
  

 

• Anti-Choice Ideology Infecting HIV/AIDS Policy

Feministe,
April 3, 2008
By Kelly Castagnaro

Despite evidence—and the efforts of Rep. Betty McCollum, experts and advocates around the world—the full House voted yesterday to reauthorize a $50 billion global HIV/AIDS relief initiative that threatens to further restrict, rather than support, expansion of HIV prevention through family planning services.
Several advocates and the mainstream media have overwhelmingly touted the President’s Plan for Emergency AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as a legacy-building success, and in one case, the “AIDS relief miracle.”

Today, nearly two million more people have access to anti-retroviral medication than five years ago due to U.S. government support. However, the number of people newly infected with HIV continues to outpace the number of people on treatment —hardly a miraculous approach to sustainable public health programming. |MORE

Did you know that married women in much of the developing world are increasingly more likely to become infected with HIV than their single peers? The New Video from PAI Sheds Light on Married Women Living with HIV/AIDS. See it here

“Every maternal death is an event we can avoid and one that we should never allow to happen. Women who die under our care are faces that stay in our memories and haunt our dreams. These are women in the prime of their lives..." Go here to learn how EngenderHealth is "Forging Partnerships to Improve Emergency Obstetric Care Services and Prevent Fistula" in Niger.