Foreign Policy Blogs

Fighting Infant Mortality

Two stories from IRIN underscore one of the big public health issues in Africa today. Maternal and infant mortality is not just a problem in Congo-Brazzaville and Ghana, though those two countries are attempting, as are so many sub-Saharan African countries, to get to grips with the reality that the birth of a child is not an uncomplicatedly joyous experience given the high death rates for both mother and child.

 

Author

Derek Catsam

Derek Catsam is a Professor of history and Kathlyn Cosper Dunagan Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. He is also Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University. Derek writes about race and politics in the United States and Africa, sports, and terrorism. He is currently working on books on bus boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s and on the 1981 South African Springbok rugby team's tour to the US. He is the author of three books, dozens of scholarly articles and reviews, and has published widely on current affairs in African, American, and European publications. He has lived, worked, and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa. He writes about politics, sports, travel, pop culture, and just about anything else that comes to mind.

Areas of Focus:
Africa; Zimbabwe; South Africa; Apartheid

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