We are really glad to have another guest blogger. Kriti from Epidemiology Tales: Stories Exploring Public Health & Life
is the author of the post below. We look forward to more posts in the future, be sure to check out her global health blog for more information.

Female Feticide: from Motherland to Diaspora

Up- country: Diya, an activist who educated women on female feticide, was recently married. She was 20 years old, and about to give birth. She was riding in a car hurtling over potholed roads toward the town hospital. Although at home, they claimed they would be happy for any child, “We like girl-children as much as boy-children,” her father-in-law would say, but she knew the reality was far different. Her mother in-law was next to her, looking tense with anticipation. She lived with her in-laws, customary in rural India, and did not have good relations with them: they were angry she had a love marriage with their son and a mind of her own.

“You had better give birth to a boy,” her mother-in-law hissed to her, as Diya’s labor pains intensified.

City: Jassi, the wife of a successful, well-known Bombay businessman, and already mother of two beautiful daughters, was pregnant with a third child. The women in her society (apartment complex) were anything but congratulatory. They admonished her, “why don’t you have a test done?” implying that she should make certain not to have yet another girl.

I was shocked to hear these stories. Both of these women, loosely based on women I’ve known, had healthy baby boys. But their problem is real, and getting worse: the number of girls for every 1,000 boys (sex ratio) went from 962 in 1981, and with the improvement of sex-testing technology, dropped to 927 in 2001. It was as low as 814 in Delhi.

At first glance, it seems like this is an economic issue, as some middle class families claimIn Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, he talks about a woman from such a wealthy family, that her dowry included a Mercedes and Switzerland vacation. Even she was forced by her husband’s family to abort her baby girl, although many women themselves believe in this practice.

Shockingly, this practice continues in the US. Census data shows that for every child born subsequent born after the first in Chinese, Indian, and Korean families, the likelihood of that child being a boy increases.

Female feticide is because of many traditions and perceptions, as well as economic and social factors coming together. Girls are seen as economic liabilities destined to leave their homes, as they traditionally go live with their husband’s family after marriage. Male children, who never leave their parents (and doing so would raise eyebrows), support them in old age. Male children earn money for their parents through jobs and dowry. Female children, however, do not. Many are not allowed to work nor offered education, and dowry continues, even among educated, well-traveled, urban elites – furthering an already insidious gender bias.

There are some successful interventions, like empowering women through education, economic power, and allowing them to take greater control of their lives – and this is where I’d like my life to focus. Before translating and preparing training materials at CORD, I never realized how deeply rooted this practice is in Indian culture. To me, Indian culture is laced with quirks, visible and invisible, but I always felt some pride and loyalty in my heritage. But this level of hypocrisy and brutality is astounding. A sign in Mumbai reads, “It is better to pay 500 Rs now than 50,000 Rs (in dowry) later”.

Though the topic makes periodic appearances in international news, and many interventions are taking place, ultimately it rests on changing social norms: At weddings, including mine, there is a prayer to bless the new couple. It states tellingly, “May you have sons”. But Babaji (my grandfather-in-law), the eldest person at the event, added “or girls, because everyone is equal now.”. Andhra Pradesh, a more progressive state, offers hope with a girl-favoring sex ratio, closer to natural patterns. – but female feticide is rising fastest among wealthier couples. In Edward Luce’s

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Thanks for checking back to this blog after a long time! I’m getting re-started, and continuing to explore issues in public health that pique my interest (or deeply sadden me, like this one). You’ll notice some changes in the look and layout, all to be easier for you. Would love your feedback, or forwards this if you know someone interested!

“Women hold up half the sky,” says the Chinese proverb, but in most of the world women are second class citizens – “girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos.” If girls and women cannot reach their full potential, then we as a world cannot either. In this century, the great moral imperative is empowering the women of the world, write Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in an impassioned article in the New York Times Magazine special issue on Saving the World’s Women

Investing in girls and women is the new focus of foreign policy. The brilliant Girl Effect video and New York Times special were based on the report Girls Count: A Global Investment and Action Agenda by Ruth Levine and colleagues from the Center for Global Development, who are releasing a report on the global health agenda for adolescent girls today. See here for Ruth Levine’s reflections on the NYT article. And, the Clinton Global Initiative is dedicating its annual conference starting on 22 September to the issue (join online on the webcast or podcasts).

Since we started blogging almost three years ago the breadth of global health blog posts has increased dramatically (most of that has come over the past 12 months). This is a great development, but we can do much more.  Here is a quote and a few links I enjoyed:

“People want to build something that feeds their soul,” says Matt Flannery, who founded microlending site, Kiva.org earlier in the decade as a Stanford student. “That trend is at a fever pitch.”

The “lazy Southerner” stereotype has global health roots

Vote for the best design to improve life

World Health Organization: a primer

The World Bank: Inventor of Last Resort?

Microfinancing works in Africa; it will work here

New film – We could see the end of seafood in 30 years, potential solutions

Candy bar social venture for promoting peace in the Middle East, Social Entrpreneurship at Change.org

CHF International Receives $1 Million to Empower Slum Dwellers via Mobile Technology

Talking Micro Pharmacies in China

The NTDs: Ubiquitous scourges of Africa

World Oil Prices and Child Health

An unexpected blackout is only part of a very full day in the OR

Forum One’s Datamasher Project

The World Bank folks (thanks to Pavneet for giving us this info), specifically the Commission on Growth and Development have a blog that they are re-dedicating some attention to:

“In the coming weeks, we will be launching a volume dedicated to issues related to Health and Growth. The volume is co-edited by Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, and World Bank Advisor Maureen Lewis. It features contributions by Sir George Alleyne, David Canning and David Bloom, Simon Johnson and Hoyt Bleakley, among others.  Topics include Early Life Nutrition, Disease and Development, and population health.”

Check out their latest provocative piece:

Health and Growth: A Heretical View?
Submitted by David Weil on Tue, 06/16/2009 – 11:23.

It has been a while since I did a global health blog link drop, here are some recent links of what’s has being discussed:

• Spare Change discusses swine flu communication, link

• Both the Guardian and Global Health @ Change.org are blogging about coke’s distribution expertise and how that might help with drug distribution in Africa, Guardian link, Mara’s take at Change.org. To read more about logistics in general, a great place to start would be Michael Keizer’s aid and logistics blog

• Nairobi – City toilets are now hubs of entertainment, link

• World Bank AIDS initiatives crowd out health programs, link

• And for a different take on AIDS Funding (there isn’t enough) see the PHR blog

• From Social Entrepreneurship to ‘Cure Entrepreneurship, link

• Winner of the 2009 Global Health Council Photography Contest, announcement, interview

• Malaria Matters on the global health e-learning center, link

• From Global Health Progress – A personal perspective on World AIDS Vaccine Day, link

• Want some juice (gossip) about global health happenings, then check out the Gorman Report

• Here is an award for the most sensational title of the month: Are the Only Innovations in Social Entrepreneurship Anglo-Saxon? link

• Interplast book review: The Life You Can Save Acting Now to End World Poverty, link

As some of you have noticed the Technology, Health and Development blog (THD Blog) formerly hosted at http://thdblog.wordpress.com has moved and changed names to this current site – Global Health Ideas (http:/globalhealthideas.org). Partly because of increased attention and scope we decided it was time for a more permanent home that would also allow us to do more. We are still going to be blogging about global health solutions, innovative projects and the use of technology and you can continue to reach any of us at thdblog AT gmail DOT com. All of our old posts will remain on the old site  and also can be found on this site. Please bear with us over the coming weeks as we sort through various bugs and coding errors.

• You can subscribe to our blog feed from the following link: http://globalhealthideas.org/?feed=rss
  
• And for those on twitter you can find Jaspal at: http://twitter.com/jaspaldesign

Welcome to our new site!

In line with the annual Global Health Council meeting theme (where we will be live blogging and tweeting from), this month’s Global Health Magazine focuses on technology for humanity, the below is from the HRIS blog:

• Are Cell Phones Leading the mHealth Revolution? — Health workers are tapping into mobile phones in the developing world as use of the portable handhelds leapfrogs exponentially over landlines and lagging Internet access.
• AIDS Hotline for Ethiopian Health Workers — The National AIDS Resource Center in Addis Ababa has established the Fitun Warmline, a toll-free telephone service designed to provide health-care professionals across Ethiopia with quick, accurate and up-to-date answers to their questions about HIV/AIDS care and treatment.
• Credit Card Know More About You Than Your M.D.? — One of the biggest challenges facing health systems around the world might come as a surprise, because it’s not about doctors, drugs or money. From Boston to Beijing to Bamako, governments and health systems face an information challenge – specifically the lack of information.

HRIS In Focus The HRIS Strengthening Blog, May 2009

You should read the whole article.

I saw this interesting post from Jaspal’s twitter feed (http://twitter.com/jaspaldesign). Speaking of twitter thanks to Alanna for the shout out about our new global health blog (more on that later). Six Revision has a post on 40 useful and creative infographics, of which I pulled out 3 that relate directly to global health: water wars, a history of swine flu, and the global tobaco trade. Related to this I posted a few weeks ago on the use of infographics to tell (or misconvey) a story. Check out the information intense and rich graphics below (I am curious what the intended audience is). On the surface these graphics are cool, but I think they might almost be better off broken up into 3 or 4 pieces. Never-the-less the public health community needs to keep pushing the boundaries of how to tell stories. As a reminder the most popular post on this blog has been about story telling by using animation to incresae awareness about HIV/AIDS.“In this collection, you’ll find forty beautiful and educational infographics, displaying the uncommon spectacle of “art meets science”.

Glass Half Empty: The Coming Water Wars
An infographic on the global water shortage crisis.

Trouble
This infographic showcases the history of the Swine Flu, starting from 1976.

SSSMOKIN! The Global Tobacco Trade
A packed visual piece on tobacco chemicals and tobacco trade worldwide.

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