Update from List Serve

Posted on: 18th Jan. 2011

A research article that says in India, condoms are rarely used during premarital relationships.

Title: Condom Use Before Marriage and Its Correlates: Evidence from India

Authors:  K.G. Santhya, Rajib Acharya and Shireen J. Jejeebhoy

Published in: International Perspectives in Sexual and Reproductive Health, Volume 37, Number 4, December 2011

Only 7% of young women and 27% of young men who report having had premarital sexual relationships say they ever used condoms in those relationships, according to “Condom Use Before Marriage and Its Correlates: Evidence from India,” by K.G. Santhya, Rajib Acharya and Shireen J. Jejeebhoy of the Population Council, New Delhi. The analysis used survey data from 2,408 married and unmarried youth aged 15–24 who had had premarital sex. For men, years of formal education and age of first sex were found to be strongly correlated with using a condom. Sexually experienced unmarried youth who felt uncomfortable approaching a pharmacy or provider for contraceptives were much less likely to have used a condom in their last sexual encounter. Both men and women who reported having friends as confidantes and those who had peers who had had premarital sex were more likely to have ever used a condom, and for men, to have used condoms consistently. The authors suggest that a new service delivery structure is needed to enable youth to obtain condoms easily and confidentially. They add that communication programs are needed to encourage condom use among youth, as well as better provider training and sensitization about the range of services that unmarried youth need.

Please read the full article available online now at: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3717011.html



An article that talks about surrogacy in India, titled “Make Me a Baby As Fast As You Can” - “How a California surrogacy operation streamlines baby production by implanting clients’ embryos in two Indian surrogates at the same time”.

By Douglas Pet, Posted on Monday, Jan. 9, 2012, at 7:15 AM ET

“The booming business in international surrogacy, whereby Westerners have begun hiring poor women in developing countries to carry their babies, has been the subject of plenty of media buzzing over the past few years. Much of the coverage regards the practice as a win-win for surrogates and those who hire them; couples receive the baby they have always wanted while surrogates from impoverished areas overseas earn more in one gestation than they would in many years of ordinary work…………………………”

“But make no mistake: This is first and foremost a business. And the product this business sells—third-party pregnancy—is now being offered with all sorts of customizable options, guarantees, and legal protections for clients……………………We take care of all aspects of the process, like a concierge service," company founder Rudy Rupak told the Journal. ”

“Of course, this approach could also leave a couple with multiple babies, possibly gestating in multiple women. Until recently, if both surrogates became pregnant—or if either surrogate became pregnant with twins—clients could opt to have the extra pregnancy aborted or twins reduced to a singleton, depending on how many babies the clients wanted or decided they could afford……………………the company no longer allows clients to elect either reductions or abortions under the advice of its lawyers, who worry that it could open up some “nasty debates” as Indian authorities discuss the possibility of surrogacy regulation. “If a client wants both surrogates then they have to accept it if both are pregnant,” he wrote………….”

“Babies aren’t like shoes any more than they’re like cars, of course, but the comparison is telling. Wombs are being rented in what amounts to an international marketplace. And with new cross-border surrogacy operations springing up recently in countries such asPanama, Guatemala, Georgia, and Greece, the number of pregnancies involving multinational players and profit interests is likely to increase. If for-profit companies are going to continue to approach baby-making like an import-export business, maybe it’s time for governments to start treating it that way, adapting oversight and protections for all parties involved. In the meantime, in the absence of meaningful regulation, the rights of surrogate mothers are being bought, sold, and signed away”..

Click here to Read more




Find an interesting and useful tool available for those working at the implementation of social policy, programmes and practice.

Quality in Qualitative Evaluation: A framework for assessing research evidence A Quality Framework

Liz Spencer, Jane Ritchie, Jane Lewis and Lucy Dillon(2003)

National Centre for Social Research UK Government Chief Social Researcher’s Office, London: Cabinet Office.

Available online at: http://bit.ly/zcNgfz 

“……..This document presents a framework for appraising the quality of qualitative evaluations. 

It was developed with particular reference to evaluations concerned with the development and implementation of social policy, programmes and practice.

The framework was devised as part of a programme of research conducted on behalf of the Cabinet Office.

The research on which the framework was built involved:

•
 a comprehensive review of the literature on qualitative research methods relating to standards in qualitative research;
•
a review of qualitative research methods used in Government funded evaluation studies;
•
a review of existing frameworks for assessing quality in qualitative research;
•
exploratory interviews with a range of people who have an interest in quality assessment of qualitative research and/or policy-related evaluations.

These included academics who have written about qualitative research from either a theoretical or empirical perspective; authors of existing frameworks;  research practitioners; commissioners and funders; and policy-makers who have used qualitative research evidence in the development and evaluation of policies; a workshop, involving the above groups, to refine the framework initially developed;

•
 a trial application of the framework to a small number of studies.

All these strands of activity have heavily influenced the content of the framework and the premises that surround its operation.

Content:

•
 Introduction
•
Scope of the Framework
•
Application of the Framework
•
Content of the Framework
•
 Further reading

Find Rapid Evidence Assessment Toolkit at: http://bit.ly/wqiC2A 



Woman dies after delivering twins outside hospitals in Kolkata

Source: PTI  Kolkata, January 13, 2012 | UPDATED 17:35 IST 

The government medical set-up in West Bengal was embroiled in another controversy on Friday when a woman died giving birth to twin babies on the road after being denied admission by two state-run hospitals despite possessing health cards.

The 40-year-old woman gave birth to the twins on the roadside near Maidan in the city late Thursday night after her husband took her first to Chittaranjan Sevasadan which refused to admit her and later to the Sambhunath Pandit Hospital that also turned her away. She died on the road after giving birth to her second child. West Bengal Health Director, Biswaranjan Satpathy said a three-member inquiry committee had been formed to look into why the woman was denied admission to hospitals.

"The patient should have been admitted in the hospital and the incident will be inquired into," he said. Leader of Opposition Suryakanta Mishra, who was Health Minister in the erstwhile Left Front government, condemned the incident and demanded that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the health portfolio, give the responsibility of the department to some other person.

Recently, Banerjee had directed the Health Department to revamp the state-run hospitals following the death of a large number of children, mostly at the BC Roy Memorial Children's Hospital in the city. An expert committee had also been set up by the chief minister to look into the infrastructural deficiencies of government hospitals.

Shared by : Adv Kamayani Bali Mahabal



Posted on: 11th Jan. 2011

Here is a Funding Oppurtunity…..

SAWF announces a standing call for its Small Grants Programme to support women's rights work in South Asia. Applications are invited from women's organizations and individual women from Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

SAWF will receive applications to the standing call throughout the year, and will disburse grants twice a year in two cycles; April/May and October/November.

You can download  the criteria for small grants applications, along with the application form and budget form from the link sent to you by email from Cmnhsa Google docs. The details are also available on their website www.sawf.info. 

Their mail ID for further communication is sawfsgp@sawf.info.



NRHM – GIS Website, West Bengal

Geographic information systems (GIS) is a set of tools that captures, stores, analyzes, manages and presents data that are linked to various location(s), like C.D. Block, District Hospital, RH/BPHC, PHC, SC etc. In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging of cartography, statistical analysis, and database technology.

“The GIS based system for NRHM is envisaged to understand the basic strengths and weaknesses of the existing health system running in the fields and to plan systematically to achieve its cherished goals.”

To Open NRHM-GIS website, type the following URL in your Internet browser www.trendsindia.org/nrhm

Note:
You need to install JAVA Plug-in namely “JRE” to view the MAP of any district. (Please ignore if you already have JRE installed in your Computer).
There is a link provided on the initial page of the system (as marked above) by using which, you can download and install JRE.
You can download the GIS users guide from the above mentioned site…It is a step-by-step guide for all users.



Find the sixth edition of the publication on “Unsafe Abortion: Global and regional estimates of the incidence of unsafe abortion and associated mortality in 2008”, Published by WHO, 2011.

Download the full document at http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789241501118_eng.pdf

“This sixth edition of the WHO Global and regional estimates of unsafe abortion and associated mortality is intended for policy-makers and programme managers, health workers and nongovernmental organizations in the area of sexual and reproductive health, researchers, groups and individuals concerned with unsafe abortion as well as others interested in information on unsafe abortion. More details of the data and methods used in the estimates are given in Annex 1.

A background to and characteristics of unsafe abortion are presented in Chapter 1. To better understand the levels and trends in unsafe abortion, the legal context of abortion and barriers both to abortion services and to medical care for women who have had an unsafe abortion and experience complications are described in Chapters 2 and 3.

Chapter 4 covers interactions in abortion, unplanned pregnancy, contraceptive use and failure and unmet need for contraception; as well as the role that abortion plays in the transition from high to low fertility levels. The health consequences of unsafe abortion and the global burden for women and for society are examined in Chapter 5. The distinction in rates and ratios when calculated for all countries or for countries with evidence of unsafe abortion are explained in Chapter 6. The global incidence and subregional differentials are presented in Chapter 7 with an in-depth analysis of the levels and trends. The geographical regions and subregions referred to in this report are those classified by the United Nations Population Division (UNPD).

Chapter 8 presents the mortality estimates. The report highlights the urgency in preventing unsafe abortion and concludes (Chapter 9) with policy and programme recommendations to reduce unsafe abortion.”

The table of contents includes:

Executive summary
 1
1
Background
2
2
Legal context of abortion
3
3
Barriers to accessing safe abortion services
7
4
Fertility transition, unplanned pregnancy, contraceptive prevalence and unmet need for family planning
 10
5
Health consequences of unsafe abortion and impact on health services
 14
6
Estimating unsafe abortion incidence and mortality
 15
6.1
Selecting the denominator for rates and ratios: all countries versus countries with evidence of unsafe abortion
 15
6.2
Estimating subregional, regional and global incidence of unsafe abortion and associated mortality
 17
6.3
Comparison with 2003 and earlier estimates
 17
7
Regional and global incidence of unsafe abortion
 18
7.1
Unsafe abortion globally and by major regions
 18
7.2
Unsafe abortion estimates for regions and subregions in 2008
 18
7.3
Trends in unsafe abortion
 23
8
Regional and global mortality due to unsafe abortion
 27
8.1
Estimated global numbers of maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion and unsafe abortion mortality ratios
 27
8.2
Case fatality of unsafe abortion
 30
9
Conclusions
 31
 
References
 32
 
Annexes
 37
 
Annex 1. Estimating the annual incidence of unsafe abortion and associated mortality
 39
 
Data on unsafe abortion
 39
 
Data collection for 2008 estimates
 39
 
Estimating the incidence of unsafe abortion
 40
 
Estimating unsafe abortion mortality
 45
 
References
 48
 
Annex 2. Countries and territories grouped according to the United Nations Population Division classification of regions
 51
 
Country listing by level of development
 51
 
Country listing by geographical region
 52
 
Annex 3. Estimates of the incidence of unsafe abortion and associated mortality, by WHO Regions, 2008
 54
 
Annex 4. WHO Regions and Member States
 56



The times of India has a video on “Shimoga: 24 aborted foetuses found in garbage dump”, dated 02 Jan 2012, 10:23PM IST| Duration: 02:16

Take a look at the video at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/Shimoga-24-aborted-foetuses-found-in-garbage-dump/videoshow/11341823.cms




Posted on: 5th Jan. 2011

The Rio+20 Conference in 2012 provides an opportunity to refine and fast-track global efforts towards sustainable development. Green economy is a dynamic concept which infuses every activity taken towards poverty eradication with sustainability, thereby greening the economy as we develop economically, socially and environmentally. 

Please find more details on Rio+20 for the member state India at:
http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?page=view&type=510&nr=49&menu=20

Please find the link for the video on Rio+20 at:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23618229/Rio%2B20.m4v

The following Powerpoint presentations (part-2) held at Istanbul are shared via google docs of CMNHSA. kindly find an email separately giving the link to access these files. 

Preliminary Thoughts from E-Survey Prior to Istanbul CSO Stakeholder Meeting, December9, 2011

ICPD Beyond 2014 Civil Society Stakeholder Group Consultations 09-10 December 2011 Istanbul, Turkey.

Equity and Social Policy: Beyond ICPD 2014, By Dr. Ana Cristina González Vélez Visiting Researcher, CEDES. December, 2011

ICPD Beyond 2014 Operational Review, The Road leading to 2014 and beyond

Rights based approach to the ICPD Agenda – Istanbul Dec 2011, By Rajat Khosla, Amnesty International

The UN Devt Agenda Beyond 2015 / ICPD Beyond 2014 – the Global Context , By Gita Sen, Professor, Centre for Public Policy , Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. UNFPA Civil Society Stakeholder Group Consultations, Istanbul, 9-10 December 2011

Working group two report, ICPD Beyond 2014 Civil Society Consultations Istanbul, December 2011.
 
 
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