For women in northern Uganda, family planning services elusive, even impossible. Getting access to contraceptives and other family planning services can be difficult for most African women, but in war-torn northern Uganda it is nearly impossible, IPS reports. Women face widespread sexual abuse in this region long haunted by brutal rebel forces, and in the refugee camps the small amounts of contraceptives available quickly get used up.
No condoms for Anambra State, as it is now illegal to encourage the use of condoms in southeast Nigeria's Anambra State. The state government has also banned the advocacy and distribution of other forms of contraceptives including IUDs (intrauterine device) and any other “un-natural” birth control. “Instead of teaching children how to use condoms to enjoy sex they should be taught total abstinence,” the state commissioner for health, Amobi Ilika said when announcing the measures in late March. “The use of condoms has greatly encouraged immorality,” he said. More than 3 million people – 3.9 percent of the adult population – are living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.
Infants are suffering serious bouts of diarrhea, and in some cases dying, from infant formula provided in emergency situations, according to a coalition that includes the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Save the Children (UK), Mercy Corps, Care, the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN's World Food Program (WFP) International Organization for Migration, HOPE, Medecins Sans Frontieres and health officials from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. They are urging all UN agencies, aid groups, and governments to ensure that women are not automatically given infant formula during an emergency and are encouraged to continue breast-feeding.
United Nations refugee officials are calling for more humanitarian and development funding in Georgia to help support an estimated 200,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees living in the Caucasus country. Johanna Langenkamp, head of the donor relations and resource mobilization service of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the extra funding was needed to meet the needs of the displaced, including Chechen refugees who have been living in the Pankisi Valley for nearly a decade.
