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“Midwives are the bridge”: Educator Duncan Shikuku on helping maternal health providers ease women’s fears and save lives
Midwifery educator Duncan Shikuku will never forget the day in 2011 when a new mother was rushed into the hospital where he worked, carried by her family. “She was listless and bleeding. Within minutes, we had lost her…
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Violence plagues women and girls amid Yemen’s relentless conflict
Rehman* was married off to an abusive man at age 15. “During our year of marriage, I lived a very hard life full of violence and abuse,” she recently told UNFPA in the governorate of Hajjah.
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A year on from Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine, tackling the onslaught on health and rights for generations of women and girls
“All of this reminds us that life continues, even during war.” Tetyana Postolovska, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, works in a UNFPA mobile reproductive health clinics in Vinnytsia, a transit region in Ukraine.
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A neglected global crisis for women: Nearly 300,000 mothers died in 2020 from preventable causes
In theory, ending maternal mortality should be achievable. Nearly every maternal death is preventable, and the clinical expertise and technology necessary to avert these losses have existed for decades. Why, then, do…
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After more than a decade of war, earthquakes are a catastrophe on top of a crisis for millions of people in Syria
Nuha gave birth to baby Huda on 5 February in Lattakia, in western Syria. The young mother remembers feeling so much hope, so much promise, for her daughter. But Huda has yet to sleep a full night in the bedroom her…
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Survivors face new risks in earthquake-ravaged Türkiye as health and protection services brought to the brink
“I’ve seen war, but this is even beyond that.” Fatma, 40, is from Idlib in northwest Syria, but lives with her four children in Adıyaman, in southern Türkiye. She was also heavily pregnant and had an appointment for a…
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“I lost everything in one minute”: Women and girls in dire need as earthquake emergency engulfs Türkiye and Syria
SYRIA/TÜRKIYE – “We were too scared. We left our houses immediately and couldn’t take anything for the birth, not a single baby cloth. There was no one to communicate with and no place to stay. We felt helpless.”
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“Women are not alone”: Painting a colourful call to end gender-based violence in Brazil
In December 2022, 12 Venezuelan women and girls gathered at Rio Branco Park in Boa Vista, Brazil, and stood before an eight-metre-high white wall. For them, it was a blank canvas – one that would soon be transformed by…
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7 things you might not know about child marriage
Around the world, Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love, romance and commitment – an occasion, perhaps, to get engaged or married. But for millions, what should be a joyous moment is not the stuff of fairy tales. Too…
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