Health Exchange

For information and websites about subjects discussed in this issue of the Health Exchange, please take another look at the articles. You may also find these resources interesting.

Maternal Mortality

UNICEF. The state of the world’s children 2009 (Dec 2008)
This report examines issues in maternal and newborn health, underscoring the need to establish a comprehensive continuum of care for mothers, newborns and children.

Bryce, Jennifer and Harris Requejo, Jennifer. Tracking progress in maternal, newborn and child survival: the 2008 report. (2008) Geneva:Countdown 2015
This report looks at progress on maternal and child survival, including country profiles on the 68 countries with the highest levels of maternal and child mortality, which account for 97 percent of maternal and child deaths.

UNICEF. A report card on maternal mortality (2008)

International Community of Women living with HIV and AIDS (ICW) resources UPDATED – POSITIVE WOMEN MONITORING CHANGE TOOL (2008) (PDF document) (Word document)
This tool, developed by HIV-positive women from Swaziland and Lesotho, has been updated with resources to help use the tool better. The tool was developed to help us monitor government commitments to HIV-positive women’s rights. This package now includes information about how the tool has been used by ICW and our partners, a training curriculum on how to use it, and some supporting resources on sexual and reproductive health, access to care, treatment and support, and violence against women.

A Positive Woman’s Survival Kit (1999)
A Positive Woman’s Survival Kit has been produced in English, Chinese, Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian, Urdu, Thai, Kiswahili and Portuguese and distributed to thousands of women across the globe. The Survival Kit is also used by HIV positive women in many parts of the world when running workshops for other HIV positive women.

ICW/GCWA Fact sheets (2006) (up-dated by ICW 2008)
International Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS (ICW) with support from the Global Coalition of Women and AIDS (GCWA) has produced three fact sheets. These frame key advocacy messages based on the findings of ICW project work on HIV-positive women’s access to care, treatment and support, violence against HIV-positive women, and sexual and reproductive rights of HIV-positive women.
Violence against women
Sexual and reproductive health and rights
Access to care treatment and support

Esplen, E. and ICW, Women and Girls Living with HIV/AIDS: Overview and Annotated Bibliography February 2007, Sussex: BRIDGE

Available in English, Spanish and French

Women and disabilities

Maxwell, Jane; Watts Belser, Julia & David, Darlena. A health handbook for women with disabilities (2007) Hesperian Foundation
Practical advice on health care for women with disabilities. This book has been developed in partnership with health care professionals and disabled women in over 42 countries.

Disabled women on the web
This website focuses on women with disabilities. The resource section offers a variety of materials on and by disabled women, including articles by disabled women, resources on women and disabilities and disabled women projects.

Naidu, Ereshnee et al. On the margins: violence against women with disabilities (2005) South Africa: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation
A report exploring why disabled women are more susceptible to violence than non-disabled women.

International Memory Project

Healthlink Worldwide. Memory work: which way now? (Nov 2008)
This paper considers how memory work makes a difference in people’s lives, how issues around sustaining and scaling up the approach are important to its continuation, and why, even with increased access to anti retroviral treatment, memory work still remains vital.

Healthlink Worldwide. Changing children’s lives (2007)
This report shares learning from the memory work that Healthlink Worldwide and six other non-governmental organisations across sub-Saharan Africa, have developed in response to the HIV epidemic.

Female condom

WHO and UNAIDS. The female condom: a guide for planning and programming (2000).
Provides an overview of the female condom and summarises current knowledge and programme experience with its provision in a variety of settings. Also included are guidance for the development of training materials for providers, as well as detailed practical advice and materials for communication information about the female condom to potential users

UNFPA and PATH Female Condom: A Powerful Tool for Protection (2006)
This is a follow up to the 2005 Global Consultation on the Female Condom, answers key questions about the female condom. It presents evidence about its effectiveness and impact, identifies challenges to wider use and suggests steps to strengthen condom programming worldwide.

UNFPA website:

Condoms for all campaign

G.Vijayakumar, Z. Mabude, J. Smit, M. Beksinska, and M. Lurie (2006) ‘A review of female-condom effectiveness: patterns of use and impact on protected sex acts and STI incidence’, International Journal of STD and AIDS 17(10)

HIV and AIDS

HIV and AIDS
This is a collection of articles, largely drawn from the OXFAM journal ‘Gender & Development’. They look at the underlying social, economic and political causes of HIV and AIDS and at the largely community-based responses to these challenges.

Women, children and HIV: Resources for prevention and treatment
This site contains a library of practically applicable materials on mother and child HIV infection including preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT), infant feeding, clinical care of women and children living with HIV infection, and the support of orphans.

Women in emergencies

Yonder, Ayse; Akcar, Sengul & Gopalan, Prema. Women’s participation in disaster relief and recovery (2005) New York:Population Council
Case studies from three earthquake-stricken areas in India and Turkey that provide examples of how low-income women who have lost everything can form groups and become active participants in the relief and recovery process.

Bradshaw, Sarah. Socio-economic impacts of natural disasters: a gender analysis (2004) Santiago:Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
An analysis of the socio-economic effects of Hurricane Mitch using a gender approach and proposal for a new analysis indicators for crisis situations.

Older women’s health

Rebuilding lives in longer-term emergencies: Older people’s experience in Darfur

General Resources about Women’s Health

Global Library of Women’s Medicine
An open source website containing peer reviewed full text resources around many aspects of women’s health including safe motherhood. Part of the site is accessible only to medical practitioners after free registration.

Women’s global network for reproductive rights (WGNRR)
This is an autonomous network of groups and individuals in every continent who aim to achieve and support reproductive rights for women. It offers critical and feminist analysis and consistently places issues of reproductive and sexual health rights within the larger socio-economic context by means of a newsletter, website, campaigns, an annual Call for Action, participation in relevant international meetings, networking and coalition-building.

Source international information support centre
Source is designed to meet the information needs of individuals and organisations working in health, disability and development worldwide. These include health workers, researchers and students, nongovernmental and governmental organisations, and disabled people’s organisations. With both a resource centre, based in London, and electronic databases, this is a unique collection of around 25,000 health and disability information resources. These include books, journals, manuals, reports, posters, CD-ROMs, websites and organisations. Many materials are from developing countries and include both published and unpublished literature not readily available elsewhere in the UK.

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