Blogs

Haiti was shaken yet again Wednesday, January 20, by a 5.9-magnitude aftershock that lasted approximately 7 seconds, cutting no break for the hundreds of thousands of already-devastated Haitians and the aid workers there to help them. There have been…

[Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Sujal Parikh.] On December 22, New Zealand and Belgium became the 25th and 26th nations to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). The convention needs only four more ratifications to…

A major earthquake of 7.0 magnitude hit Haiti yesterday just ten miles outside of Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital. The quake centered on one of the most densely populated areas of one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, knocking out…

In India, a woman enters a village health center and accesses a web page for information on how to better care for her baby. In Boston, a doctor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), one of the world’s most elite hospitals, pulls up the UpToDate…

Ugandan legislators recently released the latest version of a controversial HIV/AIDS bill that “promotes dangerous and discredited approaches to the AIDS epidemic,” according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). In a response report published by HRW and endorsed…

During his speech on World AIDS Day, South African President Jacob Zuma promised to ramp up HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs for children and high-risk groups. The new plan calls for treating all HIV-infected babies in a country whose child…

In his recent report for the United Nations General Assembly, Special Rapporteur Anand Grover emphasizes that informed consent should be a fundamental practice in a rights-based approach to health. He describes informed consent as “not mere acceptance of…

Many prisoners living with HIV are denied access to adequate antiretroviral drugs, leaving them susceptible to opportunistic infections. Recently, prisoners have increasingly demanded HIV treatment. In 2006, South African inmates launched a hunger…

[Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Sarah Mi Ra Dougherty.] In a recent opinion piece in the Financial Times, William Easterly argued that a rights-based approach to health care would favor the agendas of the rich and powerful, leaving…

More than 500,000 women die each year from preventable complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. The World Health Organization describes the main causes of maternal mortality and morbidity as “unavailable, inaccessible, unaffordable, or poor…