Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio signed into law the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act last week, introducing a penalty of at least 15 years and a fine of around $4,000 for any man who marries a girl under 18. The law also prohibits cohabiting with a child, and fines for anyone arranging, aiding or […] Continue reading ->
Fourteen months into its devastating civil war, one-half of Sudan’s 25.6 million population faces levels of food security ranked as “crisis,” emergency, or “catastrophic,” according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis.  The IPC analysis of Gaza also found that a “high and sustained risk” of famine persists across the entire occupied […] Continue reading ->
UNAIDS has welcomed the recent ruling by Namibia’s High Court that its laws prohibiting same-sex acts between men are unconstitutional as they unfairly discriminate against gay men. Namibian citizen Friedel Dausab, supported by the Human Dignity Trust, sought to have laws prohibiting sodomy and “unnatural sex acts” and sections of the Immigration Control Act and […] Continue reading ->
Growing up in Bangladesh where several infectious diseases transmitted by helminths (worms) take a large health toll, Tilak Chandra Nath has always been fascinated with the challenges of addressing diseases of poverty. During his postgraduate training as a TDR-supported fellow at the Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Indonesia in 2016, he studied parasitic diseases, focusing […] Continue reading ->
When nursing graduates in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) receive their hard-earned diplomas, they’re no longer cheered on only by proud family members and university faculty. “The recruiters pitch up on the nurses’ graduation day in our country,” one delegate told me at the recent World Health Assembly (WHA). It’s a striking image: nurses, newly […] Continue reading ->
As many as 65 million people in over a dozen Southern and Eastern African countries from Mozambique to Ethiopia are facing unprecedented challenges with food security, extreme weather events and conflict, UN officials say. The crises disproportionately affect women, who are already in a more vulnerable situation due to their gender, said Lydia Zigomo, UN […] Continue reading ->