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HIV & Children: Biases and Hopes
Despite all the awareness being generated on HIV and AIDS, stigma and discrimination continues to haunt all those who are infected. And if the infected are children, the discrimination can be daunting1 Twenty years after the first case of AIDS was reported in the country, you still hear of children being thrown out of schools and orphanages because they are HIV positive or their parents have succumbed to the infection. |
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Bilkis Bano: A Saviour of Mothers & Infants
Fifty-year-old Bilkis Bano of Khurai town in Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh may not have personally experienced the joys and sorrows of marital ties, but she knows well the bliss of motherhood. Using the benefits extended under various government schemes, Bilkis ensures safe motherhood for pregnant women belonging to poor families in her area. she has provided such help to more than 70 urban and 40 rural women.
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Spreading Health Messages Through Rituals
Traditional customs and rituals are being turned around to spread the message of safe motherhood in villages of…. A haldi-kumkum ceremony becomes an occasion of a community endorsement to encourage women to follow safe practices during pregnancy and while nurturing newborns. A Bal bhoj, where the whole village celebrates a child’s move to supplementary food, is transformed to an annaprashan – to support families with infants learn how to deal with the infant’s growing needs.
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Adolescents need reproductive health care too
Rani was in standard 12 when her classmate in her school in Pune proposed to her for “loveship”. The word itself is an indication of the distinct vocabulary used by adolescents these days and the proposal clearly meant an offer going beyond a romantic affair to a relationship that could include sexual relations.
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Where people promote Education and Health
Jashuapur is a hamlet in Khurda district of Orissa, where Cyclones have wreaked damages in the past to the village houses. With the support of Haryana Government, now the village has a double storey cyclone shelter that on daily basis, works as the classroom of the village school, Jashuapur Prakalpa Uccha Prathamik Vidyalaya.
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Two village women Spark a Movement
Sugandhabai belongs to a family of traditional dais or midwives. Her village is situated in the catchment area of Pavana Dam in the Western Ghats in Maharashtra.
Owing to her single-minded efforts her village near Pune now manages to get a reasonable supply of drinking water in this otherwise dry area. She has become a driving force for hundreds of village women.
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Ladakh's Effective Birth Control
Think Ladakh, and most people visualize a mountain hideaway of breathtaking beauty. It's a popular destination for foreign tourists out to get a feel of Central Asia, is probably the last bastion of Tibetan Buddhism, and a cold arid land which gets cut off from the rest of the country during the cruel winter months. So what's new?
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Using theatre to combat breast cancer
Linda Dias, an African Indian, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, shortly after losing her mother to cancer. The first thing she discovered when seeking medical help was the lack of awareness and paucity of information available among immigrant communities in Canada on breast cancer or how to access health services.
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A unique hygiene initiative for poor women
A young woman in Shikohabad in Firozabad district of Uttar Pradesh died a mysterious death 20 years ago. The reason for the death haunted her parents and relatives for days. Finally they found that it was her sanitary napkin that killed her.
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Using ICT to fight female foeticide
Want to register a complaint against one of the illegal abortion clinics "killing" girl child in the womb itself? You can long on to www.indiafemalefoeticide.org.
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When teachers make you quit school
According to a recent survey in Uttar Pradesh, more than poverty it’s violence that’s responsible for a high drop out rate among girls before they reach Class V.Over 1,000 girls, along with their parents and villagers, were interviewed. Most of the girls talked about the kind of violence they faced in order to access school education.
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Where There is a Premium for a Girl Child
Among Bedia tribals of U.P, Rajasthan and M.P where females traditionally engaged in the flesh trade are the providers in their clan, the birth of baby girls is celebrated while baby boys are mourned.
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Accountability and Control: A Critique of Uttar Pradesh's Population Policy
The government of Uttar Pradesh announced a state Population Policy on July 11, 2000 in response to the National Population Policy. The UP policy, however, diverged substantially from the national policy, in fact it actually contradicted it in some ways. It also went against the commitments made at the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing conference.
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