Pam Johnson

WASHINGTON, Jun 17 2011 (IPS) – By 2015, women demanding family planning products and services in the developing world will likely reach 933 million, a terrific increase from the current 818 million women demanding access to these basic reproductive commodities.
In addition, according to the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC), the number of family planning users will soar from 603 million to 709 million an increase of 64 million users across 66 developing countries, and 42 million spanning 89 middle-income countries by the middle of the decade.

The increased cost associated with this skyrocketing demand is an estimated 5.7 billion dollars per annum for both low- and middle-income countries including the expenses of procuring more contraceptive c…

SRINAGAR, India, Feb 14 2012 (IPS) – Drug abuse, known to be widespread among youth in India s northern Kashmir state, is now showing a new trend whereby teenage girls and women are increasingly turning into substance abusers and addicts.

At the police de-addiction centre in Srinagar. Credit: Sana Altaf/IPS

That young women and college-going girls are abusing substances, especially toluene, a common thinner, is testified to by officials at the de-addiction centre run by the police control room in Srinagar.

Toluene abuse or glue…

A fact-finding team from the International Atomic Energy Agency visits Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in May 2011. Credit: IAEA Imagebank/ CC by 2.0

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 2012 (IPS) – For the former industrial engineer Yastel Yamada, retirement does not mean he intends to sit back. Instead, the 73-year-old and about 700 other skilled seniors across Japan are eager to volunteer to tackle the most dangerous part of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant cleanup and spare a younger generation from the effects of extreme radiation.

Yamada and his army of radiation Samaritans are among a growing number of civil society groups across Japan that are taking measu…

From Jun. 30 to Jul. 1, 800 health experts, officials and activists will gather in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the third Partners’ Forum around the Action Plan for Women’s and Children’s Health

According to an African proverb, “every woman who gives birth has one foot on her grave.” It is time to make this proverb a historical fact and not a present reality. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

NAIROBI, Jun 27 2014 (IPS) – An African proverb says that every woman who gives birth has one foot on her grave.

Sadly, this is still true today, especially within the context of the AIDS epidemic.

In spite of the huge advances in the prevention of mother…

& of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), housed at the World Bank, is a global partnership of more than 30 leading organizations.

Credit: Water.org

WASHINTON DC, Dec 18 2017 (IPS) – Without reliable access to water, human beings cannot survive. Yet 3 out of 10 people do not have a safely managed water supply, and 6 out of 10 lack safely managed sanitation. Over 2 billion people drank water that was fecally contaminated in 2015, and the that the annual cost of poor sanitation is in excess of $260 billion annually.

The technologies that can address these shortages are not complicated, but their upfront cost remains unaffordable to many low-income familie…

Social development helps narrowing down the disparities between urban and rural areas; and gaps amongst different regions. Credit: UNESCO

BEIJING, Mar 1 2021 (IPS) – Back in the 1990s, the discovery of antiretrovirals offered a ray of hope to save people’s lives from the HIV epidemic. Over this decade, people living with HIV benefited from the scientific advances and began to have longer, healthier and more productive lives. However, almost all the beneficiaries were from rich countries in the global north. As a result, about nine million people died by the year 2000 due to the inequality in accessing these life-saving medicines.

It is a hard lesson …

Health workers are at the frontlines in the fight against the new Corona Virus. Credit: John Njoroge

NEW YORK, Sep 29 2021 (IPS) – Gender-responsive universal health coverage (UHC) has the proven potential to transform the health and lives of billions of people, particularly girls and women, in all their intersecting identities. At tomorrow’s to the 2023 UN High-Level Meeting (HLM) on UHC, Member States and stakeholders will review progress made on the 2019 HLM’s commitments and set a roadmap to achieve UHC by 2030. We, as the co-convening organizations of the , call on Member States to safeguard gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) …