What Do (Third World) Women Want? Part 2

Let's do some more listening to what women in the Third World want.

In Burkina Faso, there is new commitment to improving obstetric care and family planning.

As many as six women die every day in the West African country Burkina Faso as a result of pregnancy or childbirth. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world, and human rights group, Amnesty International, says it is the country's poor, rural women whose lives are most in danger.

Amnesty International issued a report last month that pointed to poverty and shortages of supplies and trained medical staff as well as corruption and gender discrimination as the underlying causes for high rates of maternal death in Burkina Faso.

A 2005 law gives Burkinabé women the right to choose how many children they will have and when they will have them, and government subsidies introduced in 2006 sharply reduced the cost of childbirth.

But Amnesty International found that many women do not know about their right to family planning and that poorly paid medical personnel continue to ask for informal payments with impunity.

(snip)

The Burkinabé government also committed Friday to lifting financial barriers to family planning services, which Amnesty International says can save lives by preventing unwanted pregnancies, pregnancies that are too close together and unsafe, illegal abortions.

Wiki says it is 60% Muslim but calls it 'ethnically integrated, secular'. So, at least they don't have civil war and ethnic strife to deal with.

They're trying to raise the status of women there, but still need help.

Amnesty International has also encouraged international donors to continue their support of the Burkinabé government in ensuring the availability and accessibility of adequate reproductive care for women in Burkina Faso.

Now, let's go to Afghanistan where Motherhood Steve's government is more anti-choice than the mullahs.

Some mullahs in Afghanistan are distributing condoms. Others are quoting the Quran to encourage longer breaks between births. Health experts say contraception is starting to catch on in a country where one in eight women dies during pregnancy.

Afghanistan has one of the world's highest fertility rates, averaging more than six babies per woman despite years of war and a severe lack of medical care. Awareness of, and access to, contraceptives remains low among many couples, with UNICEF estimating 10 percent of women using some form of birth control.

But use of the pill, condoms and injected forms of birth control rose to 27 percent over eight months in three rural areas — up to half the woman in one area — once the benefits were explained one-on-one by health workers, according to the report published Monday in Bulletin, the World Health Organization's journal.

Canada's goal in Afghanistan is allll about the girls and women, right?

Just not the contraception, family planning, and access to safe abortion parts that saves women's lives, eh, Steve?

BONUS: Antonia Z has some choice (hee) words for Motherhood Steve's policy.

What Do (Third World) Women Want?

Anti-choice forces say Third World Women Don't Want Contraceptives, Expert Tells Canadian Politicians.

Well, let's listen to the those Third World women, shall we?

Uganda has run out of contraceptives.

She was 16 years when she had her first baby. In six years, she was a mother of four. Tired, she sought the help of a herbalist in vain. She was pregnant again before her little one was barely three months.

Desperate, she went to Mityana Health Centre III, but they had only pills. She could not take them because her husband did not approve of contraceptives. She was advised to use depo-povera - a type of contraceptive and was injected.

However, she discontinued the contraceptive after three months because of prolonged bleeding and frequent headaches. Now a mother of seven and probably still counting, her only hope lies in a permanent method, tubaligation, which her local facility cannot provide.

This is the story of Eseza Nabbanja, 37, wife to Dan Kaweesa of Myanzi subcounty in Mityana district. "I have been struggling to get a family planning method since 1997, long before anyone in this village knew about modern contraceptives.

My husband was against it because he wanted to have more children," Nabbanja says. She thinks the situation has improved because NGOs are educating locals about the benefits of family planning.

But the long-term contraceptives are rarely available at Mityana health centre. "You have to trek to Mityana Hospital which is about 25km away," she says.

In patriarchal societies, women resort to 'discreet' methods of contraception, like injectables and implants. Yet these are the types they are not getting.

A medical superintendent of a non-profit-making hospital with a family planning programme that serves more than 700 couples each month wrote to The New Vision about the plight.

He said for the last one year, the National Medical Stores (NMS) supplied the hospital with injections, oral contraceptive pills and implants. They also invested in staff who deliver family planning free of charge in hard-to-reach parts of the country.

Suddenly, NMS stopped supplying drugs to non-government health units.

The hospital was referred to the Joint Medical Stores (JMS), who said they do not stock contraceptives for religious reasons, thus the shortage.

"We purchased emergency supplies from PACE, but will have to pass their cost onto our patients," the source said.

Poor women with the highest need for family planning, cannot afford it.

A source from NMS who preferred anonymity says the drug body has run out of contraceptives.

One regional hospital 'has not had contraceptives for 10 months now'.

And while Tanzania has reduced its birth rate somewhat, it too is facing a country-wide shortage of contraceptives.

And these are news stories from just the last couple of days.

It may be that the situation will ease now that Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, or Global Gag Rule, which denied US funding to any group that provided or even referred for abortion. And foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are helping too. Its website states:

Family planning saves lives.
One of the most cost-effective public health interventions available today is family planning. Voluntary family planning is a critical lifesaving intervention that can significantly improve the health of women and their families.

But Canada, once a beacon of sense and compassion, is now a laughing stock in the international community because of Motherhood Steve's Christo-Talibanny G8 maternal health thingy. And while he has walked back a bit from insisting that it was not atallatall about family planning, Third World women do want family planning. And they're not getting the contraceptives they want.