Women's Health News

RSS

VOA News examines family planning efforts in Uganda

Ahead of July 11, World Population Day and the date of the London Summit on Family Planning, VOA News examines family planning efforts in Uganda, where the average woman will give birth to about seven children during her lifetime.

7 Jul 2012

Exclusion of reproductive rights from Rio+20 agreement 'backslide' on women's rights, former Ireland President Robinson says

"Women's rights are under the greatest attack for almost 20 years after a failure of world leaders to continue to support reproductive rights, according to Mary Robinson," former president of Ireland and a member of the Elders group, the Guardian reports in its series "The Politics of Family Planning."

7 Jul 2012

Consider rural women in family planning services

In the third post in a series by Marie Stopes International published on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog, Mukanga Sindazi, the outreach team leader with Marie Stopes in Zambia, discusses his work traveling through the rural Central Province to educate women and men about family planning and provide modern contraceptives.

7 Jul 2012

NewYork-Presbyterian/WCMC first in N.Y. City to offer INTRABEAM radiotherapy

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center is the first and only hospital in the five boroughs of New York City to offer women with early stage breast cancer INTRABEAM radiotherapy, an innovative radiation treatment delivered in a single dose at the time of surgery.

6 Jul 2012

Examining teenage pregnancy, maternal mortality in Africa

In this audio report in PRI's "The World," PRI anchor "Aaron Schachter talks to Agnes Odhiambo, a researcher on women's rights in Africa for New York-based Human Rights Watch, about the terrible toll of teenage pregnancy and childbirth in Africa."

6 Jul 2012

Experts at U.K. conference discuss new approaches to maternal mortality in Africa

"Earlier this week the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, U.K. hosted a conference called New Approaches to Maternal Mortality in Africa," Paul Simpson, the associate editor at PLoS Medicine, reports in the PLoS "Speaking of Medicine" blog.

6 Jul 2012

Sports medicine education lacking in UK undergraduate medical degrees

In a Comment published alongside The Lancet Series on sport and exercise medicine, Rod Jaques of the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK, and Mike Loosemore of University College London, UK, highlight the lack of specialised training in sports medicine in undergraduate medical training.

6 Jul 2012

Exercise has clear benefits for physical and mental health according to current evidence

In the first Series paper, Sport and exercise as contributors to the health of nations, an international team of researchers set out to examine whether sport and exercise contribute to the health of nations. They argue that although country-wide data on participation in sports are too scarce to draw any firm conclusions in this respect, the existing evidence suggests that regular participation in sports and / or exercise has clear benefits for physical and mental health, and that health professionals need to pay more attention to their patients’ fitness.

6 Jul 2012

Vitrolife's EmbryoGlue medium increases implantation and pregnancy rates

In a study presented at the on-going ESHRE conference in Istanbul, Vitrolife's patent protected medium EmbryoGlue has once again been proven to increase both implantation and pregnancy rates, regardless of hormone stimulation of the endometrium or not.

4 Jul 2012

Italy's first successful pregnancy and delivery following transplantation of ovarian tissue

Although the first successful preservation of fertility from the freezing, thawing and grafting of ovarian tissue was reported eight years ago, the technique has remained experimental and confined to a few specialist centres. Now, with the announcement of a first pregnancy (and subsequent live birth) in Italy following the transplantation of ovarian tissue, there are indications that fertility preservation is moving into the mainstream of reproductive medicine and into a greater number of centres.

4 Jul 2012

Mississippi's lone abortion clinic gets reprieve

The state's only abortion clinic had been threatened with closure due to a state law requiring doctors to have hospital privileges.

4 Jul 2012

Blog posts address London Summit on Family Planning

The London Summit on Family Planning, co-sponsored by the U.K. government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with support from UNFPA and other partners, is scheduled to take place next week.

4 Jul 2012

Expert panel discusses family planning issues in Guardian podcast

In this global development podcast, the Guardian's Annie Kelly is joined by Julia Bunting, head of the U.K. Department for International Development's reproductive health team; Yasmin Ahmed, senior regional director for Asia at Marie Stopes International; Neil Datta, coordinator of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development; and Gita Sen, professor at the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management, for a discussion about family planning ahead of the July 11 London Summit on Family Planning.

4 Jul 2012

New exhibit highlights global health work of Seattle-area institutions

An exhibit highlighting the global health work of Seattle-area institutions is opening Tuesday in the Next 50 Plaza at Seattle Center, the Seattle Times reports.

4 Jul 2012

Working to increase access to reproductive health services in Ghana

In the second post in a series titled "Imagine a World...," posted on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog, Faustina Fynn-Nyame, director of Marie Stopes International in Ghana, discusses reproductive health in Ghana, writing, "For some women here, choices about reproductive health are something they take for granted," but "other women in Ghana -- indeed most -- are not able to do this."

4 Jul 2012

Indonesia must work to empower women in order to improve maternal health standards

Though Indonesia is "widely seen as a development success story -- indeed, it is sometimes referred to as one of Asia's 'rising powers' ... in the area of maternal health, the successes have been modest and much remains to be done," Andrew Rosser, associate director of the Indo-Pacific Governance Research Centre at the University of Adelaide, writes in an Inside Indonesia opinion piece.

4 Jul 2012

Perinatal mortality risk in IVF reduced by single embryo transfer

A policy of single embryo transfer (SET) reduces the risk of perinatal mortality in infants born as a result of IVF and ICSI. The conclusion emerged from an analysis of more than 50,000 births recorded in the Australian and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Technology Database between 2004 and 2008, where the introduction of an SET policy has been associated with a reduction in overall perinatal mortality for IVF and ICSI babies.

4 Jul 2012

Higher waist circumference, obesity improve health outcomes in heart failure patients

A slim waist and normal weight are usually associated with better health outcomes, but that's not always the case with heart failure patients, according to a new UCLA study.

4 Jul 2012

Advocates leave Rio+20 'more determined than ever' to secure access to reproductive rights for all women

"There is a direct correlation between access to voluntary family planning, women's empowerment and environmental sustainability," author Diane MacEachern writes in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog, adding, "And though the official delegates to last week's 'Earth Summit' tried to water it down, thousands of grassroots activists made it one of the biggest issues to rock Rio+20, as the event was also called."

4 Jul 2012

High coffee consumption appears to reduce clinical pregnancy rate by 50%

Women who drink five or more cups of coffee a day severely reduce their chance of success from IVF treatment. Indeed, Danish investigators who followed up almost 4000 IVF and ICSI patients described the adverse impact as "comparable to the detrimental effect of smoking".

4 Jul 2012