Category: General

UNFPA is playing a key role in elevating the Lao PDR’s national midwifery curriculum to save the lives of mothers and babies.

Despite progress in maternal mortality, the Lao PDR still has a high maternal mortality ratio of 185 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2017.

Eighty-three per cent of all maternal, stillbirth and newborn deaths can be averted with a full package of midwifery care, including family planning. Investment in midwifery programmes saves lives and is essential for the Lao PDR.

“For the curriculum revision this year, we have a variety of content to update and improve, especially the adolescent and youth-friendly services, gender-based violence, family planning, and inclusive services that consider, among others, people with disabilities. In addition, we also need to include key topics such as coping with COVID-19 and other emerging issues content to ensure our curriculum is up-to-date,” said Ms. Souksavanh Keobailuang, Midwifery teacher, Xieng Khuang Public Health School, who participated in a UNFPA-supported midwifery curriculum revision workshop in Vangvieng, Vientiane province this month.

The workshop gathered midwifery faculty members from across the country to improve modules and subjects for updating to reflect significant changes in global midwifery standards. Participants also discussed new areas to integrate or strengthen, such as leadership skills, inclusive practices, adolescent and youth-friendly services, family planning, gender-based violence, and the Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) for humanitarian response.

In the Lao PDR, with technical and financial support from UNFPA and partners, the Ministry of Health established a midwifery cadre starting in 2008. Support was given to the Community Midwife programme to upgrade the skills of auxiliary nurses and midwives. The Higher Diploma in Midwifery curriculum was then developed in 2015. To ensure alignment with international standards, curricula must be periodically revised.

Strengthening the quality of midwives to meet international standards is vital in reducing maternal deaths, improving mother and child’s health, and achieving the national commitment to ICPD25, which states that Laos will end maternal mortality and the unmet need for family planning by 2030.

In 2019, UNFPA commenced the revision process of the current curriculum with the support of Khon Kaen University (KKU). Midwifery Faculty Members who participated in capacity-building activities and training with KKU and UNFPA were organized into working groups and have advanced the revision process alongside their work as faculty members at various midwifery schools in the Lao PDR. UNFPA’s midwifery programme is supported by the Government of Luxembourg, Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH), Maternal Health Thematic Fund (MHTF), and UNFPA core fund.

Source: Lao News Agency

Director General of the Department of Communicable Diseases Control, Ministry of Health Dr Rattanaxay Phetsouvanh has called on people across the country to be cautious and comply with anti-Covid-19 measures, avoiding crowded places and mass gatherings during the celebration of upcoming Pi Mai Lao, or Lao New Year B.E. 2565.

The past one week witnessed 15,342 new Covid-19 infections recorded nationwide at a rate of over 2,000 cases per day, according to Dr Rattanaxay.

Daily cases of Covid-19 are expected to double during the celebration of Lao New Year which falls annually on Apr 14-16.

Some 1,038 new Covid-19 cases and three new fatalities attributed to Covid-19 have been reported nationwide over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 184,598 including 5,434 active cases and 682 deaths.

The new daily transmissions were detected among 2,384 people tested for Covid-19 yesterday. Of the new confirmed cases, 1,021 were classified as domestic infections and 17 as imported cases.

On Sunday, some 426 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospitals nationwide.

The highest number of domestic transmissions was respectively recorded in Vientiane with 516 cases, Savannakhet 104, Khammuan 63, Vientiane (province) 60, Xayaboury 43 and Borikhamxay 38.

Source: Lao News Agency

Cameroon observed World Autism Awareness Day Saturday with rights groups advocating for autistic children to be given an education. Supporters say autistic children often can’t go to school because autism is falsely believed to be a result of witchcraft.

The Timely Performance Care Center, a school for disabled children in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, organized a campaign for parents and communities to stop the stigma that autistic kids often are subject to.

The center has an enrollment of 70 autistic children.

The school’s manager, Betty Nancy Fonyuy, said autistic children are frequently kept at home because of stigma. She said many communities and parents abuse the rights of autistic children by refusing to educate them or give them the freedom to socialize with other children.

“We want parents to accept the children that God has given them and to be able to educate the society that these children are not a form of divine punishment for witchcraft or a class of any evil thing. These children have a lot to offer to society if given a chance. Give them the chance. The world needs to know what autism is. Accept individuals born and living with autism,” she said.

Fonyuy said in January 2021, the center organized a door-to-door campaign to urge parents to send their autistic children to school. She said the response was encouraging, but that many parents still hide their autistic children at home.

To mark World Autism Awareness Day on Saturday, scores of community leaders, parents of autistic children and heads of educational establishments in Cameroon’s economic capital, Douala, emphasized at an event that autistic children, like any other children, need love, care and education.

Among the speakers was Carine Bevina, a psychologist at the University of Douala.

Bevina said parents should enroll their children in school because the parents would find it difficult to train their autistic children on their own. Bevina spoke by a messaging app from Douala.

She said autism level one means that a child needs regular attention and help to surmount difficulties initiating social interactions and maintaining reciprocity in social interactions. She said autism level two means that a child has repetitive behaviors and requires substantial support, and autism level three means the child’s communication skills are regressing.

Ndefri Paul, 45, is the father of an 11-year-old autistic child.

Paul said he came out on World Autism Awareness Day to tell anyone who doubted it that autistic children can compete with other children if well educated. He says in 2021, his autistic son, like many children without autism, wrote and passed the entrance examination to get into secondary school.

The educational talk at the Douala city council courtyard on Saturday was part of activities marking World Autism Awareness Day.

Similar activities were held in towns, including Bafoussam, a western commercial city, Garoua and Maroua on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria, and Yaounde.

Officials in Cameroon say there are 750,000 autistic children in the central African state. Sixty-five percent of them are denied education.

Cameroon’s Social Affairs minister, Pauline Irene Nguene, said communities should stop stigmatizing autistic children with the erroneous belief that autism is divine punishment for parents of autistic children. She said communities should denounce parents who hide autistic children at home and schools that refuse to teach children with the disorder.

The U.N. says that autism is genetic and families with one child with autism have an increased risk of having another child with autism. The U.N. says family members of a person with autism also tend to have higher rates of autistic traits.

World Autism Awareness Day celebrates the resilience of people affected by the disorder and supports causes that promote awareness of autism. Children in schools are educated about autism and encouraged to accept it. The U.N. launched World Autism Awareness Day for the first time in 2007.

Source: Voice of America

Britain is experiencing a record number of COVID-19 cases, with almost 5 million people, or 1 person in every 13 infected, according to official data.

The news of the spike in infections came on the same day that Britain stopped giving free rapid COVID tests to most of its population, as part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “living with COVID” plan.

Under Johnson’s plan, people who do not have conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19 must pay for tests to find out if they have been infected.

The uptick is blamed on the highly contagious omicron variant BA.2, which is also causing an increase in hospitalization and death rates. However, the number of infections is expected to start decreasing this month and next month, officials say.

“Any infection that spreads rapidly, peaks quickly and decreases rapidly on the other side,” Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian.

According to an Associated Press report, a University of Oxford biology professor said he believes most people in the country will be infected with the variant this summer.

James Naismith said, “This is literally living with the virus by being infected with it.”

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that it has recorded more than 490 million global COVID cases and more than 6 million deaths. Nearly 11 billion vaccines have been administered, according to Johns Hopkins.

Source: Voice of America

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan — a time when Muslims abstain from food, drink, smoking and other activities from dusk to dawn daily, begins at sundown Saturday in most parts of the world

At sunset, Muslims break the daily fast with the iftar, a meal shared with family and friends.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the lunar Islamic calendar, and start and end dates vary each year. According to conventional Islamic belief, the Quran, the Muslim holy book, was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad more than 1,400 years ago during Ramadan.

Fasting, one of the five pillars of Islam, is practiced by Muslims to achieve a greater consciousness of God. The other pillars include praying, giving alms, professing one’s faith and going on a pilgrimage to Mecca, called the hajj.

This year will be the largest hajj since global coronavirus pandemic restrictions were enacted two years ago.

The Islamic Networks Group, based in San Jose, California, describes Ramadan as “a month of intense spiritual rejuvenation with a heightened focus on devotion, during which Muslims spend extra time reading the Quran and performing special prayers,”

Last year, fasting across the world ranged from 10 to 20 hours a day. In many majority-Muslim countries, working hours are reduced and restaurants close during fasting hours.

Ramadan ends at sundown on May 1.

Source: Voice of America

The future of abortion rights is in flux in the U.S. as the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the issue in June. Since September, Texas has banned abortions after six weeks.

Amy, a spoken-word poet, recently had an abortion. And it was no easy task. The divorced mother of a 3-year-old said she barely had time to think once she realized she was pregnant — because she is in Texas.

“If I would have had a little bit more time, lowered my blood pressure a little bit — maybe I would have made a different decision. We’ll never know,” she said.

In September, the state enacted the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. Amy, who declined to give her last name, knew she had just days to make her decision, find a place to get an abortion, and then go through with it.

“I don’t even think I had gotten the results from the pregnancy test, and I was already googling where to get an abortion in Texas, just so that I could have the option,” she said.

Amy’s experience in Texas may soon become reality for more women in the U.S.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide on an abortion case in June that could spur a wave of abortion rights restrictions throughout the nation.

Worried abortion rights advocates point to life in Texas under the new law, where abortion is illegal after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is around six weeks of being pregnant for most women.

The law also carries the ability to sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion after six weeks.

The reality for most women is the deadline is even shorter. When Amy missed her period, two weeks after having sex, she was considered to be four-and-a-half to five weeks pregnant, since pregnancy is calculated from the first day of a woman’s last period. Amy had less than a week, but after multiple phone calls, she was able to get into a clinic.

“I didn’t even have time to assess my own thoughts, I felt the clock ticking,” she said.

For anti-abortion activists, this time constraint is a big step in the right direction.

“Our goal is to make a society such that no woman would even consider having an abortion because she feels there are no alternatives. We do have vast alternatives,” said Joe Pojman, founder of Texas Alliance for Life.

Instead of seeking an abortion, Pojman wants pregnant women to visit Texas’ nearly 200 crisis pregnancy centers, where he says they can find support.

Brittany Green-Benningfield, who heads the Pflugerville Pregnancy Resource Center, said such groups offer a variety of resources for pregnant women.

“So this is our baby boutique for our moms,” she said while offering a tour of the center. “This is where, when they come and take lessons with us, they get an opportunity to shop. Through classes, they earn points, and then they are able to take what they need. We have a licensed sonographer, and she provides ultrasounds for any of our clients that come in. We are giving our moms a first glimpse to see their baby.”

The centers also help women make doctor’s appointments and offer things like canned goods until the child is 2-and-a-half to 3 years old. Pojman said it’s all a big step in the right direction, but that much more work is needed.

“While the number of abortions has substantially decreased and women are seeking more agencies that provide alternatives to abortions, there are still tens of thousands of abortions in Texas going on,” he said.

In some ways, Amy was a best-case scenario for someone seeking an abortion in Texas. She knew the law, she knew she had to move quickly, and she had resources to get an abortion and possibly travel out of state, if necessary. That’s not the case for poorer women who are being harmed most by the law, say abortion rights advocates.

Sarah Wheat, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, said she sees the obstacles women can face.

“Once they find out and are informed that Texas law prevents them from accessing an abortion right here as they’re sitting already in our health center, it’s too much, the barriers are too great, whether that is that they don’t have access to reliable transportation or they can’t get time off of their job or they don’t have somebody to take care of their children. It is totally out of reach,” she said.

In each month between September and December, 1,400 Texas women went out of state for an abortion, according to the University of Texas. That’s more than 4,000 women. Many others who missed the deadline ordered abortion pills online, which come with risks when not taken under medical supervision.

Amy said this makes her worry.

“Women are going to get abortions,” she said. “They’ve done it for centuries, even when they were fully illegal, and that’s how women died from abortions. So if you take away this decision, you’re ultimately just taking away women’s lives.”

Source: Voice of America