Family Planning

Alfredo Felix is a peer counselor with the Department of HIV at Jaime Mota Regional Hospital in Barahona, Dominican Republic. “I’ve always felt motivated to work in the community to inform people,” he says. The area shares a border with Haiti and has a large immigrant population at risk for HIV.

Peer counselors like Alfredo play an important role in countering the effects of stigma, which can make it hard for people to seek information about HIV and follow through with treatment. Alfredo tells a story about someone he helped: Read more »

“To talk about sexual and reproductive health, and not to talk about human resources for health—then the equation is not complete,” says Patrick Mugirwa, a program officer with Partners in Population and Development (PPD) Africa Regional Office. “So for PPD to have meaningful advocacy for sexual and reproductive health, of necessity human resources for health must be one of the major components we must advocate for.”

A CapacityPlus associate partner, PPD is an intergovernmental alliance that promotes South-South cooperation toward attainment of the global population and reproductive health agenda for sustainable development. Read more »

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Currently, almost half of the world’s population is under the age of 25. That represents three billion adolescents who have their full lives ahead of them. A strong education and economic opportunities can help adolescents plan productive and fulfilling futures, but without access to reproductive health services, their plans could be interrupted by unintended pregnancy. Unfortunately, many adolescents currently live in places that restrict access to these services for young people.  

And in some cases, these adolescents are married. Some communities view early marriage as a protective factor for a young woman’s sexual health and safety; however, early marriage is a risk factor for many health and social issues. Often married to older men, these young women typically have little to no negotiating power in their relationships, resulting in unsafe sex and adolescent pregnancies. Read more »

This post was originally published on USAID's IMPACT blog.

What if you could take a fraction of a penny and use it to help build a health system? Believe it. It takes only a fraction of a single penny per American taxpayer dollar to train a global health workforce—a workforce that will reach millions through treatment, prevention, and counseling services.

Just ask midwife Teddy Tiberimbwaku, who had the opportunity to meet Uganda’s vice president Thursday.

Last year, Uganda’s Ministry of Health, operating with only one doctor and 13 nurses to serve every 10,000 people, was told by the Ministry of Public Service that not only could it not create any new positions, but also any unfilled positions—some 42 percent of them—would be lost. Read more »