The maternal mortality ratio is unacceptably high in Africa. Forty per cent of all pregnancy-related deaths worldwide occur in Africa. On average, over 7 women die per 1,000 live births. About 22,000 African women die each year from unsafe abortion, reflecting a high unmet need for contraception. Contraceptive use among women in union varies from 50 per cent in the southern sub-region to less than 10 per cent in middle and western Africa" UNFPA
Early and unwanted childbearing, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and pregnancy-related illnesses and deaths account for a significant proportion of the burden of illness experienced by women in Africa. Gender-based violence is an influential factor negatively impacting on the sexual and reproductive health of one in every three women. Many are unable to control decisions to have sex or to negotiate safer sexual practices, placing them at great risk of disease and health complications.
According to UNAIDS, there is an estimated of 22.2 million people living with HIV in Sub-Saharan African in 2009, which represents 68% of the global HIV burden. Women are at higher risk than men to be infected by HIV, their vulnerability remains particulary high in the Sub-Saharan Africa and 76% of all HIV women in the world live in this region.
In almost all countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, the majority of people living with HIV are women, especially girls and women aged between 15-24. Not only are women more likely to become infected, they are more severely affected. Their income is likely to fall if an adult man loses his job and dies. Since formal support to women are very limited, they may have to give up some income-genrating activities or sacrifice school to take care of the sick relatives.
For more information on HIV/AIDS and Reproductive health, please visit the following websites:
Source: unfpa.org
Three times, Abebech Kabla has given birth alone in the woods. Each time, she thought she might die. The first time, she was only 13 years old, a year into her marriage. “Even after giving birth, I didn't go back to my house for seven days until I became clean from blood,” she said.
Source: newsdeeply.com
Shantel sits in a bar lit by TV screens. Wet bottles of Tusker beer line the shelves, low cushioned chairs crowd the floor. A client waits for her in a back room. Shantel’s parents died when she was 15, leaving her and her sister Magdari alone. “My parents died with HIV so I didn’t have anywhere to go. It’s when I started sex work,” she says.
Source: newsdeeply.com
Under a tarpaulin tent pitched in the world’s largest refugee settlement, a pair of newborn twins is cause for celebration. “They will grow fat,” midwife Christine Ajidiru says, gushing over the mother, Maria Gire, who is breastfeeding one of her new baby girls.
For Esenam Amuzu’s peers in Ghana, teen pregnancy, gender-based violence and risky sexual behavior are often the norm. On World Population Day, she explains how sex education and access to contraception can turn girls’ lives around.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
Women fleeing conflict or uprooted by disaster are desperate not to become pregnant when their lives are already at risk.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
After giving birth at the age of 13, whenever Amina Mba wanted to attend prayers in her local mosque, sheer terror would stop her from crossing the threshold. "I would go and hide behind the mosque in order to pray," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, as she lay under a flowery cover in a ward of the Catholic Hospital Complex of Batouri in eastern Cameroon.
In many African countries, women who are in need of C-sections aren’t able to get them, causing some to die in labor. Researchers have found that enlisting nurses to carry out the procedure could save lives across the continent.
Evelyn Dolo saved a teenage girl’s life, but not out of good will alone, she admits. A traditional birth attendant for more than 15 years in the small Liberian village of Zahmboyee, Ms. Dolo was summoned one night to help the teenage girl deliver her baby. Ms. Dolo rushed the girl to the nearest hospital, about 25 miles away, where she was immediately taken into surgery.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
When he worked as a nurse in his native South Sudan, Joseph Deng saw many women suffering in pregnancy and childbirth, inspiring him to retrain as a midwife to help cut the number of maternal deaths, one of the highest in the world.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
During six years of selling sex on the streets and in brothels across Cameroon's capital Yaounde, Rose has been abused, attacked and forced to have unprotected sex by her clients. "There are some ferocious beasts amongst them," said the sex worker, a tall woman in her late thirties, wearing a short black dress and sporting a neck-length wig of straight dark hair. "Some men get violent... sometimes they attack you.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
Kenya has promised free sanitary pads to all schoolgirls to encourage them to go to school during their periods, rather than stay at home with rags or tissues stuffed in their underwear. Every schoolgirl is Kenya is entitled to "free, sufficient and quality sanitary towels" and a safe place to dispose of them, according to the law introduced this week.