20 May 2013 - Press Release
UNITED NATIONS, New York—Countries around the world will mark the first-ever International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, 23 May, with a variety of events to raise awareness of this neglected health and human rights challenge.
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20 May 2013 - Feature Story
MAHAJANGA, Madagascar — Every day, 10 women die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth in Madagascar. Perhaps 20 times that number suffer from untreated complications of pregnancy, including the most debilitating injury of childbearing, obstetric fistulas. Although the condition was not recognized in the country until recently, it is estimated that 2,000 Malagasy women develop fistula each year.
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15 May 2013 - Opinion
In this Opinion piece, published by the British medical journal, The Lancet, UNFPA's Executive Director talked about the results of this year's Commission on the Status of Women, which resulted in several ground-breaking measures to prevent violence against women and support the survivors of such violence.
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14 May 2013 - Feature Story
CHITIXL, Guatemala --- "In my village girls do not have access to information nor education," said Sonia Delfina Cho Tún from the Chitixl community in the lush northern highlands of the country. "There isn´t a local high school. We only get to study to sixth grade. Mostly girls marry at age 15, not knowing what their future holds for them and their children.
"Parents force them because they say that when they reach age 20 and are single, they can no longer find a husband and are left to grow old alone."
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11 May 2013 - Opinion
In this Opinion piece, published by CNN, UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin talks about the important role men can and must play in lifting the obstacles that prevent women from access voluntary family planning, one of the most cost-effective ways of improving health.
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08 May 2013 - Dispatch
SUVA, Fiji — If alarming rates of violence against women are to be effectively addressed, the status of women needs to be elevated. UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin emphasized the fundamental, often unacknowledged, contributions of women – to families, communities and economies – during the launch of the
Pacific Regional ICPD Review report. The persistence of alarming rates of gender-based violence is one of the critical issues in the region.
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08 May 2013 - In the News
NIZIP, Turkey — More has to be done to ensure the health and wellbeing of women and children affected by the Syrian conflict, said Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the UNFPA, on a recent visit to Turkey's Nizip refugee camp, about 40km east of the southern city of Gaziantep. One of Turkey's newest camps, Nizip houses some 10,000 refugees, or "guests" as the government prefers to call them, in white canvas tents and containers arrayed in neat numbered rows along the rocky, sun-bleached banks of the Euphrates.
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07 May 2013 - In the News
ZA'ATARI, Jordan — In a tent hospital bed, a Syrian woman who was four months pregnant when she fled her country's civil war cradles one of the newest residents of this dust-swept refugee camp: Her newborn son, just delivered by Caesarean. Around a dozen babies are born every day in Za'atari camp, which is home to 120,000 Syrians and counting – and there's only one, overworked Moroccan doctor performing C-sections.
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