SAVING WOMEN’S LIVES
Funding Cuts Lead to Maternal Deaths
A study by the Global Health Council found that the steep drop in worldwide family planning funds from the United States, combined with unmet pledges from other wealthy nations, contributed to more than 300 million unintended pregnancies and the deaths of an estimated 700,000 pregnant women between 1995 and 2000. The Boston Globe reported September 26 that the study assessed progress since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. ''Unfortunately, since 1994, the collateral victims were the women of the developing world,'' said Nils Daulaire, GHC president. “This is a totally preventable tragedy. We have the technology, the means, and the cost is incredibly cheap.” Read: The Boston Globe

Afghan Women
Although the new Afghan government has strongly promoted women's rights, and international aid groups have launched programs to improve health care for pregnant women and children, Afghanistan remains one of the planet's riskiest places to have a baby. The Washington Post reported September 26 that many rural women are anemic or malnourished, making them especially susceptible to complications of childbearing. Sometimes, according to doctors there, a husband will prefer that his wife die in childbirth rather than be exposed to male doctors. A recent study by Physicians for Human Rights found that 97 percent of women there delivered at home with no skilled help and that maternal health care facilities and providers were "virtually nonexistent." Only 11 percent of women received prenatal care, and 593 died in childbirth for every 100,000 live births. Read: The Washington Post and a Sept. 24 New York Times’ story about similar heath care problems in India, “In a Battered Taxi, a Nurse to India's Poorest.”

The New York Times reported September 22 that Afghanistan's women are as eager to get an education for themselves as for their children. "I wanted to know something and help my children," said Mahgul, 45, a widow and mother of six. "I have no knowledge, and so I am not a useful person." The Times noted that "blind" is the word many of these illiterate women use to describe themselves, and it speaks to the confusion and difficulties they encounter as uneducated members of a society already harshly discriminatory against women. "Without knowledge, I am blind; I do not know white from black," said Torpikay, 30. "In town, I do not know where is the hospital, or the baths or the washroom, and I will take my dishes into the wrong place, because we just follow other women and don't know where we are going." Read: The New York Times

INTERNATIONAL FAMILY PLANNING
Knight-Ridder Population Research Institute’s Findings
The anti-family planning organization, Population Research Institute, alleged that an empty desk in a government office that enforces China's strict population rules proves the U.N. Population Fund supports coercive abortions. But Jodi Enda of the Knight Ridder news service reported September 18 on an investigation that found that UNFPA has no desk or staff members there. Enda also noted that a State Department fact-finding team also couldn't find the empty desk or any U.N. employee in the southern China county. The State Department found that UNFPA did not knowingly support the coercive abortions that it said still occurred in China, and recommended that Bush continue U.S. contributions. The administration, however, ignored those findings and eliminated American funding for the U.N. program. In her September 18 feature on PRI’s President, Steven Mosher, Enda described him as “a man who has made a career of attacking population control measures.” She noted that Mosher has credited Marx with bringing him into the anti-family planning movement and convincing him to convert to Catholicism. He now has nine children. "Good for the economy," Mosher said. On September 30 the Associated Press reported, “President Bush formally shifted $34 million from UNFPA, which he said tolerates abortions and forced sterilizations in China, to an [USAID-run] program meant to boost children's health overseas.” Read: Knight Ridder: “Small Advocacy Group Influences American Policy” and Enda’s feature on PRI’s President, Steven Mosher.

USAID Cuts Condom Program in Philippines
According to a September 24 story by Agence France Presse, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a long-time supporter of Manila's population program, will provide the country $3 million worth of contraceptives in 2003 and 2004. After that, it will provide only technical assistance to the private sector and local and national governments to help people acquire family planning information and means. A USAID statement said, “In the past 11 years, USAID has donated about 40 million dollars worth of contraceptives to the Philippines, accounting for over 80 percent of the country's total supply.” AFP said USAID has been trying to wean the Philippine government away from dependence on the United States as its sole source for free contraceptives.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported September 27, “Instead of raising clenched fists, a militant group of pro-choice advocates waved condoms and lighted skyrockets wrapped in prophylactics during a [Sept. 26] protest…in Manila to object the US government’s withholding of $ 34 million in family planning funds.” Women Rage spokesperson Rhodz Espino said, “When President Bush ran and won with a pro-life platform, he actually declared war against the poor and working women all over the world. This forced international organizations to forego US funds intended for family planning programs.”

HIV/AIDS WORLDWIDE
The Financial Times reported September 30 that Nelson Mandela, South Africa's former president, has further distanced himself on HIV/AIDS from Thabo Mbeki, his successor, declaring that too little support was available to sufferers from the disease via the public health service. Speaking in a township near Johannesburg, Mandela said the South African government would soon be forced to make anti-retroviral treatments more widely available. FT noted that research by the Kaiser Foundation shows that fewer than 16 per cent of South Africa's HIV-affected households are receiving illness-related financial help from the state. "Most (South Africans) have no prospect of accessing anti-retroviral treatment and will inevitably die. The situation will not be allowed to stand," said Mandela. Read: Financial Times

On September 25, the Associated Press reported, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said in Rwanda that the world has a stake in helping Africans survive AIDS and in using the knowledge gained to help other regions where the disease is growing at alarming rates. "I believe reversing the AIDS (pandemic) is the most important issue that is facing the whole world," Clinton said. AP noted that Clinton is traveling with actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker to promote efforts to fight AIDS and encourage economic development. Etienne Karita, head of the Treatment and Research AIDS Center, said, "Rape and deliberate infection of people with HIV were used as weapons during the genocide, and more people contracted the disease while living in the refugee camps during the chaos." In a related event, the European Commission (EC) said it will provide US $22 million to help fight HIV/AIDS in Zambia. "We are looking for projects that have young women as the focus…Women are particularly subject to constraints and various forms of sexual violence in the home, at school, at the workplace because of social and economic factors," an EC spokesman in Lusaka told IRIN. Read: Associated Press, IRIN and The Village Voice’s Sept. 24 story, “Giving AIDS the Red Light.”

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND POPULATION
PAHO Report
The Washington Post reported September 26 that the Pan American Health Organization has found that life expectancy in the Americas has risen by six years over the past two decades, and infant mortality has been cut by about one-third. The Post noted that the total picture, however, is decidedly mixed. “The region's overall improving health masks wide disparities among countries. The incidence of AIDS in Caribbean countries is second only to that in sub-Saharan Africa.” Read: The Washington Post

Fighting Child Poverty
According to a September 27 story by the Associated Press, Laura Bush joined first ladies from across the Americas in a pledge to fight child poverty, recognizing the problem is not limited to developing countries but also plagues rich ones like the United States. Promising to honor their roles as "promoters of change," the 22 spouses of heads of state ended a conference in Mexico City on Sept. 26 by signing a 50-point declaration. The statement says, “Our mission is to encourage the creation and improvement of social programs that promote effective, tangible benefits for children living in poverty." AP noted that the signatories pledge to work toward everything from equal access to education and healthy early childhood development to responsible sexual attitudes in children and the reintegration of street kids into mainstream society. Read: Associated Press

Canada Increases Foreign Aid
Agence France Presse reported September 24 that Canada pledged Tuesday to double the aid it gives to poorer nations by 2010. International Co-Operation Minister Susan Whelan said Canada intended to "concentrate more of its resources on low-income countries that are committed to reform, particularly in Africa." Whelan said in a National Press Club of Canada speech that the streamlined policy will focus on four "social development priorities" -- health and nutrition, AIDS prevention, basic education, and child protection. AFP noted this pledge is in addition to 10 million dollars (6.3 million US) already committed to the UN Population Fund, which emphasizes family planning and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, as part of a plan to reduce world poverty by 50 percent by 2015. In July, the United States stopped contributing to the Fund, citing the group's stances on abortion and the sterilization of women in China.

NEPAL PASSES ABORTION AND PROPERTY RIGHTS LAW
Nepal approved a new law legalizing most abortions, criminalizing pedophilia and giving women property rights, reported the Associated Press on September 27. The law, which went into effect Thursday, is "a major achievement in the fight to end gender discrimination against women in Nepal," said Chitra Lekha Yadav, Parliament's deputy speaker. AP noted that all abortions were previously prohibited and violations were punishable by three years to life imprisonment. It is estimated that nearly 20 percent of the women in prison have been convicted of having an illegal abortion. Abortions performed beyond the time limits in the new law are still punishable by one to five years in prison. Nepal has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Asia. Read: Associated Press

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS
In its September 27 editorial, The Boston Globe wrote “China's release last week of AIDS activist Dr. Wan Yanhai after a month of secret detention is good news for the fight against the deadly disease…but the charge against Wan - that his whistle-blowing report on widespread AIDS infection in rural China was a betrayal of state secrets - is absurd.” Wan's disappearance in August provoked protests not just from AIDS activists worldwide but from the United Nations and the US State Department. It threatened to become an embarrassing incident as China prepares for its Communist Party Congress in November and a visit by the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, to Washington next month. The Globe concluded, “Chinese officials have to realize that transparency and prevention are the only hope against a disease that can negate many of the highest aspirations of a nation.” Read: The Boston Globe and The New York Times

The Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) ran a September 22 op ed by Prof. Clifford Bob of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh who wrote, “With another season of Survivor about to begin, the networks missed an opportunity to revolutionize ‘reality television’ this year.” Bob suggested, “Why not Slum Survivor?” – where the contestants are placed in mega-cities, stripped of everything but their clothes and given $1, about what 1 billion people survive on daily. He concluded that for prizes, he would award “Losing contestants, whose birth in the developed world already made them winners in the world's greatest crapshoot, a bright future and a long life, something hapless slum dwellers can only dream of. And for the final contestant, some understanding about how the majority of the world's people actually live their lives.”   

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The above summary was written by Elena Cabatu and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700. Redistribution is encouraged with credit to CCMC.