Hesperian Weblog

Pesticides and Pre-natal Care

California agribusiness has long been working to maintain dangerous pesticide use by heavy lobbying, spending and misinformation campaigns to prevent methyl iodide from being banned in California. But in a recent hearing, as noted in a posting from Pesticide Action Network (PAN):

"The pro-chemical-industry remarks of the Farm Bureau representative... hit a new low when he likened the use of methyl iodide (linked to fetal death, birth defects and cancer) and other fumigants, to "good pre-natal care" for California fields. He found no cause for concern with the fact that the way California approved methyl iodide legalizes exposure at up to 100 times higher than levels their own scientists recommended to prevent fetal death and birth defects."

We’ve been criticized for exaggerating in these drawings from A Community Guide to Environmental Health, when the views of the farmworker in the drawing sound a lot like the Farm Bureau rep quoted by PAN.

Here at Hesperian, we’re not evaluating whether we should add a pesticide sprayer to our “essential tool kit” in our Book for Midwives; instead we’re finishing our work on the Spanish language edition of A Community Guide to Environmental Health, Guía comunitaria a la salud ambiental, due back from the printer on May Day. Email us if you’d like to get an announcement when the book is available for pre-order, and we’ll ship it hot off the press.

In the meantime, you can purchase or download for free A Community Guide in English, as well as a shorter booklet, Pesticides are Poison, available in English or Spanish.

Nnimmo Bassey on climate solutions, from Nigeria to Brazil to Stockholm

Nnimmo Bassey leads Environmental Rights Action, based in Nigeria, and was a reviewer of Hesperian’s A Community Guide to Environmental Health. Jeff Conant, one of the authors of A Community Guide, recently interviewed Nnimmo at the COP 16 (officially the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) conference in Cancun, Mexico. The interview was originally published on the Climate Connections blog, and is copied below in full. Read more about Nnimmo’s work and beliefs, as well as his collaboration with Hesperian here.

Interview with Nnimmo Bassey from COP 16, Cancun
By Jeff Conant
January 11, 2011

Nnimmo Bassey, the Chair of Friends of the Earth International and Director of the Nigerian organization Environmental Rights Action [http://www.eraction.org/] is a poet, architect, activist, and tireless spokesperson for human and environmental rights. I’ve known Nnimmo since 2005 or so, when he served as a reviewer for the chapter on oil in my book, A Community Guide to Environmental Health.

Nnimmo left Cancun in the middle of the first week at COP16 to fly to Stockholm to accept his Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) where he delivered this speech calling for a tribunal for climate criminals; he returned to Cancun to participate in the second week of negotiations, and then, soon after returning to his native Nigeria, he was arrested – a fairly common occurrence for Nnimmo, due to his commitment to environmental justice and his high profile activities – and then released.

I caught up with Nnimmo and conducted this short interview during the second week of COP 16 – between his acceptance of the Right Livelihood Award and his arrest and brief detention in Nigeria.

– Jeff Conant

Jeff Conant: I’m here at COP 16 in Cancun with Nnimmo Bassey, the Chair of Friends of the Earth International and Director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria. Nnimmo, what are your impressions of the COP up to now? What do you see happening here, and what do you believe will happen here in the next 24 hours?

Nnimmo Bassey: You know, if anybody attends this COP from civil society and if you are concerned with what is happening to the planet and the people of the planet, you will be wondering if this COP gathering is worth it at all, because from what we’ve seen, these negotiations are not about tackling the systemic causes of climate change and global warming. They are about business. Its about selling carbon credits, its about fictional projects that would help polluting companies to continue to pollute; its not about worrying about nations that may disappear, about small island nations, no: its about securing the interests of corporations; it appears corporate-driven, driven by the will of the market. So, I would say that we really need to reexamine how to make the system work.

JC: Now, for years you’ve been fighting against oil development in Nigeria, against the human rights violations and the violence associated with oil development. You’ve gone to prison for it, you’ve given your life over to it, and now we’re seeing this new initiative, REDD, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, which, ostensibly is going to give money to developing countries to protect their forests, which, in theory, should prevent oil exploitation, mining exploitation, in forest areas. And yet you are not in favor of this policy. Can you talk about that?

NB: The whole idea of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation is not about stopping deforestation. The focus is on emissions reduction, and even that is still based on the fiction of market as a force that can the yield dividends in favor of tackling the challenge of global warming.

There are many things wrong with the process. Number one, as I said, its not going stop deforestation; its going to hand over forest communities and forests to the highest bidder. And so the people are the losers, forest communities are the losers. For those who buy up these forests, who are paying for these forests as carbon stock – because they’re seeing the trees not as trees but as carbon stock – it means that forest people can no longer use the forest in they ways they know best; they can’t live off the forest, they can’t hunt in the forest, they can’t get their medicines in the forest, they’ll be completely cut off so that this carbon stock can be preserved for somebody to get the carbon credits and then pollute somewhere else in Europe or North America.

Secondly, when forests are secured for REDD to generate carbon credits or whatever, there is no guarantee that in twenty years’ time and in a hundred years’ time that forest will not be cut down. There may be a change of policy, and then all the carbon that was supposed to be stored will be released. Moreover, you can save one forest in one part of the country as a REDD forest, but nothing stops deforestation from going on somewhere else. We’ve seen cases in Southeast Asia where forests have been earmarked in advance for this sort of program, and then those who paid for the forests deforested around it, made a plantation around it. So the whole thing is a myth, and its so shocking that global leaders would sit down and push more and more of these fictions, rather than figuring out how to tackle global warming at the source.

[Note: FOEI recently published a report on REDD, here.]

JC: One of the other things we’re seeing, we saw it at the CBD in Nagoya, we’re seeing it here, is this push for the Green Economy. Part of what we’re seeing is agrofuels, biofuels, bioenergy, biomass incineration as new forms of energy that are ostensibly going to be replace black carbon fossil fuels. So for someone, again, who’s been fighting against the petroleum industry all your life, one would think this would be a good thing. Can you talk to me about that?

NB: (Laughs) Well, we’ve looked critically at the issue of agrofuels and biofuels, the use of food crops to produce ethanol for machines, for driving cars, and we’ve seen that all of these can never replace fossil fuels; they’re just intensifying the same paradigm of development. It’s industry driven, it’s driven by speculators who want to grab land in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, and who don’t really want to change the mode of economy we’re living right now. For the oil industry, for example, this is a very welcome idea because they’re also investing in biofuels, they’re influencing the policies for biofuels. The Nigerian policy on biofuels was written by the Nigerian petroleum corporations, and it’s such a crazy policy that it completely gives everything – national sovereignty, tax breaks, and lack of control – everything is given over to those who are going to invest in biofuels.

And we know that even if you use all the agricultural land in the world to cultivate agrofuels, you’re not going to replace fossil fuels, you’re only going to meet a fraction of the energy need. And so we’re asking for a change, a complete change; we’re not asking for additions to fossil fuel, we want a stoppage of the use of fossil fuels, to leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole, to leave the tarsands in the land, and then get out of agrofuels investments. We prefer biofuels that can be used at small-scale local community levels, run and managed by the people, to meet minor energy needs. But to think that industry can run on biofuels would mean to takeover all the lands in Africa and the poor countries in exchange for cash; and in exchange for that, people are going to starve; it’s a death sentence for communities.

JC: Finally, we’ve just learned from the Wikileaks cables that Shell Oil has been putting people into the Nigerian government, and they’ve been very explicit about it in these leaks. Can you comment on that?

NB: The wikileaks actually just confirmed out suspicion, because these corporations could not have been behaving with impunity the way they’ve done over the decades if they were not the ones running our government. And because we don’t have real democracy, we don’t have people who are accountable to the electorate, you don’t really have politicians who would work in the interests of the nation and in the interests of the people. And so Shell could boast that even if you traded all the offices, they’d get to know whatever government is regulating the oil industry. Government efforts to regulate the oil industry are frustrated continuously. This is why they’re not accountable for their pollution, they don’t respect court orders, they don’t allow the Nigerian government to prepare an acceptable Petroleum Industry Bill—there’s one that’s been in the works and the industry said they won’t accept it if it’s not in their favor, so until now the government’s been unable to move on that. And so what we’ve heard from Wikileaks shows that these corporations have been engaged in espionage against the people of Nigeria, they don’t respect the people, they don’t respect the environment, and in fact one of the things I read in the report published so far is that they had and they have in-depth knowledge about the violent actions being carried out by militant groups in the [Niger] Delta. And so when they claim that violence is stopping the oil production, I think they are part of that problem; they’ve been instigating the violence, and they should be brought to boot. Shell should be in the dock; the Nigerian government should investigate and bring them to account. Unless they want to tell the whole world that they’re working hand in hand.

Health advocates condemn Binayak Sen’s unjust conviction

On December 24th Dr. Binayak Sen, a vibrant voice for bringing health as a human right to the poor in India, was sentenced to life imprisonment for sedition. Hesperian has been campaigning against Dr. Sen’s unjust imprisonment and conviction, and stands with health advocates around the world in condemning his sentence. More than two dozen Nobel Prize winners have signed statements demanding his release and demonstrations have been held in many countries around the world against his trumped up conviction.

Read statements from our partners in Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (the Peoples’ Health Movement – India) and The Lancet below, and a statement from Dr. Sen here. You can also read mainstream media coverage of the initial protests against his sentence here, listen to radio coverage here, and find more information on the Free Binayak Sen campaign website. The campaign will be organizing a Global Day of Protest around January 30th, including a protest outside of the Indian Consulate in San Francisco on January 28th at 10am.

PHM India (JSA) statement on Binayak Sen's conviction
Date: 27 Dec 2010

We, the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, a coalition of national networks and organizations actively working for health rights in the country, express our outrage at the verdict of the Raipur district and sessions court, on 24th December 2010, declaring Dr Binayak Sen, General Secretary of the Chhattisgarh People's Union for Civil Liberties and Vice-President of the National PUCL, guilty of sedition and treason, and sentencing him to life imprisonment.

Dr Sen has an illustrious record of over 25 years of selfless public service in areas of health and human rights. He has been an active member and former convenor of the Medico Friend Circle, a national organization of health professionals working towards an alternative health system responsive to the needs of the poor. He has been closely associated with the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, the Indian chapter of the People’s Health Movement. In recognition of his work, the Christian Medical College, Vellore conferred on him the Paul Harrison Award in 2004, which is the highest award given to an alumnus for distinguished service in rural areas. He continues to be an inspiration to successive generations of students and faculty. Many of his articles based on his work have been internationally appreciated.

His indictment under the draconian and undemocratic Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2006, and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 is utterly condemnable. Not only has the farcical nature of the trial been reported in the media, the charges against Dr Sen, of engaging in anti-national activities, have been widely held as baseless. This judgment is an unacceptable attempt to intimidate and vilify those who advocate for the rights of the poor and the marginalized, and reveals the indiscriminate use of state machinery to stifle democratic dissent.

JSA believes that a great injustice has been done, not only to Dr Sen but also to the democratic fabric of this country. JSA salutes Dr Sen’s work, and demands that justice be delivered in his case.

Binayak Sen’s conviction: a mockery of justice
The Lancet
January 8, 2011

On Jan 4, the day this issue of The Lancet went to press, Binayak Sen should have been celebrating his 61st birthday. Instead, found guilty of treason and sedition by a court in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, Sen is facing the bleak prospect of a life behind bars. It is an inhumane sentence for a committed humanitarian, whose life before his imprisonment was devoted to improving the health and welfare of some of the most marginalised and poverty-stricken people in India—the Adivasi. This work led to Sen becoming the first Indian recipient of the Jonathan Mann award for Global Health and Human Rights in 2008.

From the outset the charges against Sen reeked of political motivation—a reaction to Sen’s tireless documentation of human rights abuse at the hands of the state. He was accused, on the flimsiest of evidence, of acting as a courier for the imprisoned Maoist leader Narayan Sanyal. The subsequent trial, spanning more than 3 years, was Kafkaesque. Its conclusion is a travesty.

Reaction to the ruling was swift, with the Indian press unanimous in their criticism of the court’s decision. Amnesty International described Sen as a prisoner of conscience, while a statement signed by over 80 prominent academics worldwide decried the sentence as savagery. The Lancet adds its voice to this chorus of condemnation.

In April, 2009, we called for the Indian Government to intervene in the case, and ensure that justice be done. An injustice can still be overturned by India’s supreme court. If it is not, the already profound damage done to India’s credentials as an upholder of human rights will be damaged for years to come. Where the state failed to provide for its poorest citizens, Sen stepped in to give them health care and to champion their rights. His reward: to be convicted under a section of the penal code first introduced by the British to quell political dissent, and later used to convict Mahatma Ghandi. On his conviction, Ghandi argued that the administration of the law had been “prostituted consciously or unconsciously for the benefit of the exploiter”. The conviction of Binayak Sen shows that, in parts of modern India, precious little has changed.

Photo courtesy of AFP/Getty Images via The Lancet. 

Disabled Women Activists Change the World Through Music Video: Loud, Proud and Passionate!

Mobility International USA (MIUSA) has just released a loud, proud, and passionate new video, featuring 54 disabled women from 43 countries singing, dancing, and marching together to change the way the world perceives women with disabilities. Many of these women helped to develop Hesperian’s A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities, and co-author Jane Maxwell joined the women as an ally during MIUSA’s 5th International Women’s Institute on Leadership and Disability (WILD) conference, where the video was made.

You can watch the full video here:

Read the full press release here. The video is captioned. For the text video description in English click here.

US affirms Human Right to Health with signing of Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

On December 16, 2010, President Obama announced that the United States will sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Among many other rights, the Declaration affirms that indigenous people are entitled to the human right to health:

Article 24, Section 2: Indigenous individuals have an equal right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. States shall take the necessary steps with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of this right.

Hesperian joins the People’s Health Movement and tribal leaders across the United States in applauding this move, especially in President Obama’s choice to specifically recognize the health disparities that exist in Native American communities. During a speech at a White House Tribal Nations Conference, President Obama said, “We know that Native Americans die of illnesses like diabetes, pneumonia, flu – even tuberculosis – at far higher rates than the rest of the population. Make no mistake: These disparities represent an ongoing tragedy. They’re cutting lives short, causing untold pain and hardship for Native American families. And closing these gaps is not just a question of policy, it’s a question of our values – it’s a test of who we are as a nation.” Hesperian and the People’s Health Movement have long believed that to achieve good health, communities (and governments) must address the underlying causes of poor health, including poverty, discrimination, and economic disparity.

A detailed, 15-page statement from the U.S. government on their support of the declaration can be found on the United States Mission to the United Nations website.

Graphic courtesy of UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Hesperian friend Amy Hagopian under attack by Bill O’Reilly

Should We End Military Recruiting in High Schools as a Matter of Child Protection and Public Health?  

Amy Hagopian is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, and a long time friend of Hesperian who is now under attack by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News. Hesperian’s Director, Sarah Shannon, has worked with Amy on the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association, and in various activities within the International Health Section of the APHA and the People's Health Movement.

O'Reilly is attacking Amy’s well-researched and thought-provoking study, “Should We End Military Recruiting in High Schools as a Matter of Child Protection and Public Health?” published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study, co-authored with Kathy Barker, makes the case that military recruiters in high schools are a violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and a threat to the public health of adolescents. We're sharing a link to Amy's excellent paper, and an article from the Huffington Post denouncing O'Reilly’s attacks on her.

Read Amy’s paper here. 

An Indecent Man: Bill O'Reilly's Shameful Campaign Against Amy Hagopian
Dave Zirin, Sports correspondent for the Nation Magazine

In my mind, when the Fox News star Bill O'Reilly decides to make you a target, it's a badge of honor. This is a man who politically is a proud Islamaphobe, declaring, "We have a Muslim problem, not a Muslim extremist problem." And personally? Anyone who likes to tell people how his "happy ending" masseuse thinks he's well endowed clearly has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality.

That's why his latest attacks on University of Washington Assistant Professor Amy Hagopian tells far more about the twisted mind of O'Reilly than the serious study the professor authored. Hagopian wrote an academic paper for the American Journal of Public Health making the case that military recruiters in high schools were in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a threat to the public health of adolescents, and even suggesting military recruiting behaviors were akin to -- as she put it -- "predatory grooming." It's a serious, data-packed analysis of the way recruiters have manipulated information and targeted the most economically disadvantaged students to fill the ranks of those fighting and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The overarching thesis of the study is hardly shocking or groundbreaking. After all, we know that in 2005, the Army ordered its recruiters to "stand down" for a day of retraining because of habitual mendacity. We know the intense pressures on military recruiters to meet quotas has led to a series of high profile ethical violations. I know from my work at DC area high schools that the recruitment booths aren't set up at elite institutions like St. Alban's or Georgetown Prep. They're at public high schools like Ballou and Bell. In other words, recruiters fish in places where young people have fewer options. Hagopian's academic study simply backed up what has been over the last five years, a very public scandal. This is what I thought when I read her paper.

When O'Reilly read her paper.... all right let's stop there. I will contend there is no way Bill O'Reilly actually read her piece. None. He doesn't reckon with any of Hagopian's sobering data. He doesn't reckon with the suicide rates among troops, the effects of exposure to depleted uranium, or any of the ways that the realities of war are fudged over by recruiters to fill their quotas. There is just O'Reilly doing his neo-McCarthyite best to chill free speech. All O'Reilly needed was Hagopian's use of the word "predatory" when describing recruiters. Next thing you know, he was hitting the airwaves attacking Hagopian for calling recruiters "child molesters."

This is sick. Why this is where O'Reilly and his producers' minds go is honestly between them and their internet browsers. But tragically, when he sends his shock troops into battle, they can damage a person's life. Now, Amy Hagopian, for the unholy crime of conducting academic inquiry into a public scandal, has been harassed by O'Reilly's loyal listeners. They have sent threatening letters and emails to the school offices. They have made a series of profane phone calls to her colleagues. They have contacted her university and demanded that she should be fired for writing what is a peer-reviewed publication in the primary journal of public health in America. Please take a moment and imagine if that was you. Imagine if you created a contribution to public discourse to provoke discussion and debate. Imagine if you were ready to defend your findings against others who would surely disagree. And then imagine if instead you found yourself a personal target for a reactionary media giant using his outsized pulpit to make your life a living hell. That's not journalism and it's not punditry. It's the actions of an obscene, indecent bully. If there is one object lesson I've learned about O'Reilly's character from these attacks, it's that he clearly despises women who tell sobering truths. I suppose he just wants them to administer happy endings.

Photo by K. Barker, from the AJPH paper: Students at Garfield High School in Seattle, WA, drop to the floor for pushups under the command of a military recruiter at the school in 2009

Voices from Climate Negotiations in Cancun

Jeff Conant, former Hesperian staffer and co-author of A Community Guide to Environmental Health, is at the United Nations COP 16 climate negotiations in Cancun, Mexico this week. He is working with Global Justice Ecology Project, Indigenous Environmental Network, Global Exchange, Climate Justice Now! and a host of other organizations, to draw attention to the urgent need for governments, civil society, and the international community to develop solutions to the ecological crisis. These solutions must be just, equitable, and based in human rights and the rights of nature. To follow events as they unfold, with updates from Jeff and the groups he’s involved with, go to Climate Connections and Red Road Cancun – to read Jeff's posts, follow this link.

Photo courtesy of Orin Langelle/GJEP-GFC at Climate Connections. 

Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Falls Short

Late in September, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the US’s commitment to a global initiative to improve the quality of cooking stoves for millions around the world, primarily in developing nations.

Hesperian wrote about the problems associated with many stove designs and poor ventilation in our most recent book, A Community Guide to Environmental Health. The book contains a comprehensive section on indoor air pollution, fire safety, and instructions for building more fuel efficient, cleaner stoves. From chapter 17:

When people burn wood, dung, coal, charcoal, gas, and crop wastes indoors for cooking or heating without good ventilation, smoke fills the house. This smoke contains harmful gases (fumes) and tiny particulates (soot) that cause breathing problems and other illnesses. Headaches, dizziness, and fatigue are often followed by serious illnesses such as asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, or lung cancer. Indoor air pollution from smoking fires also increases the risk of getting TB.

Women and children are the most exposed to harmful cooking smoke. When pregnant women are exposed to a lot of smoke every day, it can cause their children to be born very small, grow slowly, and have difficulty learning later on. In some cases, it can even cause children to be born dead.

In addition, says a recent article in the The New York Times, “The stoves also contribute to global warming as a result of the millions of tons of soot they spew into the atmosphere and the deforestation caused by cutting down trees to fuel them.” And later, “Although the toxic smoke from the primitive stoves is one of the leading environmental causes of death and disease, and perhaps the second biggest contributor to global warming, after the industrial use of fossil fuels, it has long been neglected by governments and private aid organizations. The World Health Organization says that indoor air pollution caused by such cooking methods is the fourth greatest health risk factor in developing countries, after unclean water and sanitation, unsafe sex and undernourishment. The gathering of fuel is mainly done by women and children, millions of whom are exposed daily to dangers in conflict-torn regions. The need to forage for fuel also keeps millions of children out of school.”

Unfortunately, the NYTimes discusses this in a way that absolves from responsibility the US government (including Ms. Clinton’s State Department) and the forms of development it allows people in the world to pursue. It doesn’t mention that access to clean, inexpensive cooking fuel as a public utility is routinely opposed by US foreign and economic policy, as is the extension of primary health care, local control over resources as a way to avoid conflicts, and free, high quality, and accessible educational systems. Instead, the focus is on how poor people make too much smoke.

The new initiative discussed by Clinton, called the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, has a goal of providing 100 million clean-burning stoves to villages in Africa, Asia and South America by 2020. The group describes itself as “a public-private initiative to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions.” Even the organizers admit that if fully realized, the initiative would only address about one fifth of the problem.

Although increased emphasis on and attention to these issues is positive, our concerns echo those of Jennifer Lentfer, who wrote about this topic in her blog, How Matters: “My concerns are based on wanting to ensure that any efforts to improve people’s lives in the developing world are first based on the locally available resources, rather than creating additional dependency on outside ‘expertise,’ supplies, or technology.”

At Hesperian, we believe that individuals and communities can improve the cookstoves they already use by modifying the designs, or can make new stoves using available, inexpensive, local materials. Check out the stove designs and read more about reducing indoor air pollution, improving ventilation, and increasing fuel efficiency in A Community Guide to Environmental Health here, or download the chapter containing instructions for building better stoves here.

Support Expanded Legal Rights for Midwives

Hesperian has long recognized the central role that midwives can play in pregnancy and birth around the world. The US is no exception. A recent New York Times article on September 24 about the possible legalization of direct-entry midwifery practice in the state of Illinois did a great job of summing up some of the current statistics surrounding birth practices in the U.S. For example, the article cites the National Center for Health Statistics which says that the number of home births are rising slowly in the US, “Up 5 percent from 2004 to 2005, and remain steady at 25,000 in 2006 — the last year for which figures are available.”

Direct-entry midwives – those who do not have any other medical training such as a nursing degree – are only legal in 27 US states, and this NY Times article discusses the current controversy over making direct-entry midwifery practice legal in Illinois – some individual practitioners and medical associations (including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) believe that the home is not an appropriate place for births and that midwives are ill-prepared to handle problems or complications. Supporters of legalization believe that current laws force midwives to operate underground, and prevent them from developing relationships with doctors and hospitals who can help when there is an emergency.

Hesperian’s A Book For Midwives, first printed in 2004 and updated last in 2009, provides clearly written and easily understood materials to assist midwives in providing care to support women during pregnancy and birth. We recognize that even in developed countries like the United States, there are many reasons why women and families choose to have births at home and to seek care and support from midwives. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of A Book For Midwives:

For thousands of years, since long before there were doctors or hospitals, midwives have been helping women stay healthy, helping babies into the world, and helping families grow. Ask a woman why she prefers the care of a midwife and she will tell you that midwives are knowledgeable, patient, and respectful of her traditions.

Why are midwives such important and valued health workers?

• Midwives trust in the safety of pregnancy and birth, and have confidence that women can work together to protect their own health.
• Midwives often live in the communities they serve, so the families they help know and trust them.
• Many midwives spend more time with the women they care for than a doctor or clinic worker would. This helps midwives to better understand women’s needs, and to see danger signs.
• Most midwives are women. Many women feel more comfortable talking to a woman health worker.
• Midwives charge lower fees than most doctors or hospitals – valuing service to the community over the pursuit of money or power.
• In poor communities where there are few health services, midwives are often the only health workers.

For all of these reasons, in most of the world midwives are the first and sometimes the only health workers women go to for help in birth or for any health problem.

A recent piece on NPR’s Morning Edition and News Blog highlighted the crucial role that midwives in Afghanistan play in caring for women and children while working to reduce maternal mortality. Here in the U.S., state representatives in Illinois will vote on the Home Birth Safety Act, which makes direct-entry midwifery legal in that state, as early as next month. For more information, visit these websites:

• Coalition for Illinois Midwifery
• Illinois Families for Midwifery
• Change.org petition in support of the Home Birth Safety Act
• Chicago Doula
• The Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA)

Aruna Uprety speaks to Congress on Human Trafficking

This Thursday, long-time Hesperian friend and partner Aruna Uprety will speak in front of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs during a hearing on human trafficking, “Out of the Shadows: The Global Fight Against Human Trafficking.” 

Aruna is the founder of the Rural Health Education Services Trust (RHEST), a health and education nonprofit working in Nepal, and chairman of the American Himalayan Foundation’s Stop Girl Trafficking Program. RHEST has translated a number of Hesperian books into Nepali, including Where Women Have No Doctor and A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities; the translation of A Book for Midwives is currently underway. This summer, Aruna spent several weeks at our offices as a Hesperian Fellow, part of a new program in which we welcome experts from around the world to participate in revising and expanding our materials. Aruna worked primarily on material for our major rewrite of Where There Is No Doctor, focusing on the women’s health and nutrition chapters. She also worked with our translations staff and contributed to other projects, including the Women’s Action Guide and the Workers Guide to Health and Safety.

Below is a video produced by the American Himalayan Foundation that features Aruna speaking about trafficking of young girls:

 

Stop Girl Trafficking from AHF on Vimeo.

You can watch a live webcast of this week’s hearing by going to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs website during the hearing, which will be held Thursday September 30, 2010 at 10 a.m. EST.

Other speakers at the congressional hearing will include: The Honorable Luis C de Baca, Ambassador-at-Large, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking In Persons, U.S. Department of State; David Abramowitz, Director of Policy and Government Relations, Humanity United; The Honorable Mark P. Lagon, Chair, International Relations and Security Concentration, and Visiting Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; Neha Misra, Senior Specialist, Migration & Human Trafficking, Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO; Beryl D’souza, M.D., Medical Director and Anti-Human Trafficking Director in India, Dalit Freedom Network.