Access to reproductive healthcare must to sustain development in Senegal

14/07/2020 0 Comments read Gender, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 14.07.2020 (IPS): Pregnant with her second child, 30-year-old Ndiabou Niang was enduring pelvic pain, but couldn’t afford to access prenatal care in Diabe Salla, a village on the outskirts of the small town of Thilogne in north-east Senegal. Her husband was unemployed and her earnings of under CFAF 10,000 (17 USD) from selling seasonal fruits in the local market were insufficient to make ends meet.

Duing her last prenatal visit, she was prescribed some tests, an ultrasound and some medicines that would cost CFAF 39,000 (USD 67). But as the amount needed was astronomical for her meagre income, she silently suffered. Many pregnant rural women, living below poverty line, don’t follow through on the prescription and delay their prenatal visit till they are in their third trimester, which puts them at greater risk of pregnancy-related complications. Continue reading →

Exploitation for forced marriage, organ trafficking rife in Asia Pacific

18/05/2020 1 Comment read Features, Gender

A trafficked survivor reunites with family in Vietnam. Photo Supplied by Blue Dragon Children's Foundation

The writer won the 2020 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Best Print Report Award for this story

The writer’s interview on SBS Radio Hindi Service

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 18 May 2020 (IPS): A single mother, Mai (name changed) had the responsibility of providing for her young son and grandparents, who had brought her up in a poor rural province in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. While she was looking for employment, somebody approached her on social media with an offer of a high-paying job in China. When she arrived in China, she was sold to a man for ‘marriage’.

For two months, Mai suffered violence and beatings from her `husband’, who kept her locked in the house. When she tried to fight back, the ‘husband’ sold her to another man seeking a wife. She was forced to have sex as the family wanted a child. When she became pregnant, she was given some freedom and allowed to work in a nearby shoe factory. Desperate to escape this forced marriage and slavery, she managed to connect online with a Vietnamese man, who referred her to Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, an Australian charity working in Vietnam.

Continue reading →

How Vanuatu women are responding to climate change

20/04/2020 0 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development, Gender

ActionAid Vanuatu conducting COVID 19 awareness and TC Harold early warning preparedness for islanders. Photo Credit: © ActionAid Vanuatu

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 20.04.20 (IPS): Sitting atop a banyan tree branch, Fiona Robyn had a cell phone tightly clasped in her fist raised high to get a signal. She was impatiently waiting for the SMS weather alert from the Women Wetem Weta (Women’s Weather Watch – WWW) hub in Port Vila as cyclone TC Harold raged towards the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean on 5^th April.

No sooner had she received the message, Robyn, a WWW leader in Eton on the eastern coast of Efate island in Vanuatu, immediately swung into action. She began mobilising other women and youth to help widows, the physically challenged and older people secure their roofs, store food and clean water, secure documents in air tight containers, and move those in unsafe houses to the local school serving as an evacuation centre.

Continue reading →