Each day, one thousand women die in childbirth and one million people become infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including 7,000 cases of HIV. Yet these numbers are preventable, experts insist, when countries possess the resources and willpower to address and deal with them. Dignitaries and high-level officials gathered this week to discuss reproductive health commodity security (RHCS), or, simply put, ensuring that people have access to essentials of reproductive health...

-The United Nations   As the world population approaches seven billion, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed that ending global poverty and inequality is the key to unleashing the great human potential for prosperity and peaceful coexistence, while protecting the planet and safeguarding the natural resources that sustain humanity. “Later this year, a seven-billionth baby will be born into our world of complexity and contradiction,” Mr. Ban said in a message to mark...

The United Nations commemorates World Population Day next week against the backdrop of an upcoming landmark event: global population hitting the seven billion mark by late October this year. According to current projections, and with some of the world's poorest nations doubling their populations in the next decade, the second milestone will be in 2025: an eight billion population over the next 14 years. Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N....

-The United Nations   Up to 3.6 million deaths could be avoided each year in 58 developing countries if midwifery services are upgraded, according to a report released today by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and partners. The study, The State of the World’s Midwifery 2011, estimates that an additional 112,000 midwives need to be deployed in 38 countries to meet their target to achieve 95 per cent coverage of births...

-The United Nations   Five United Nations agencies have banded together to call for urgently addressing gender-biased sex selection favouring boys, a common practice in many parts of South, East and Central Asia that they say fuels a culture of discrimination and violence. “Sex selection in favour of boys is a symptom of pervasive social, cultural, political and economic injustices against women, and a manifest violation of women’s human rights,” says a...