The 4th APCRSH Youth Space grew from an idea of the APA secretariat to provide an internet and café area during the conference. It was envisaged that young people could come and receive accurate and up to date information and resources on sexual and reproductive health issues relevant to them in their work and personal lives in a youth friendly space. It was also hoped that youth focussed groups could hold side events and young people could socialise in the space when conference sessions weren’t being held.

The APCRSH Conference steering committee approved the Youth Café concept and Dr Gill Greer, Director General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and a member of the Conference Steering Committee also agreed that IPPF would co sponsor the Youth Space with APA. On behalf of IPPF and APCRSH Steering Committee, Gill approached APA to also host an orientation session for young people and first time conference participants the day before the conference started. The target group would mostly be the 64 youth delegates attending IPPF’s regional meeting, and invitations were also extended to participants in a youth advocacy workshop being held by International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) and a preconference workshop being held by the Network of Asia Pacific Youth (NAPY). All these groups came together quickly and cooperatively along with members of the Youth Coalition and an innovative and informative programme for the Youth Space was drawn up for the four days of the conference.

With funding from APA and IPPF, the Youth Space project was then developed by APA and from its member organisations, a number of younger staff were approached to work together as Youth Coordinators for the project. With technical support from the APA Secretariat, they identified broader partners from different organisations and organised the Orientation Workshop for Young People who were attending the conference.

The Youth Space was set up to provide a café, internet facilities, meeting and movie room and general chat and relaxation area. In addition to these, the Youth Space provided a wide selection of youth focussed materials on SRH (including condoms), for both display and for people to take home. A programme of events was devised spanning 4-days, beginning with the Youth Orientation Session on Sunday 28th October, 2007. Over the following 3 days, the Youth Space hosted both cultural, film and practical sessions covering SRH work with Young People in most geographical regions of the world, and particularly highlighting the work being done in the Asia and Pacific regions. The Youth Space served as a place for young conference attendees to meet and to connect, not only building support systems at the conference but also remaining in touch and sharing experiences with friends and family at home. Stronger networks and alliances were developed and the Youth Space gave these groups a place to meet, discuss and build statements, strategies and plans for the future.

The Space also played a strategic role in making all conference delegates aware of the importance of generational activities at International Conferences. It symbolised youth care and nurturing by practically setting up a place that specifically benefited this cohort. Special thanks and mention must also be made of the tireless energy and smooth running of the logistics by Francesca Barolo and her team at the secretariat.  More detailed documentation on events and activities held at the Youth Space will be available in the near future and will be circulated widely.

APA Youth Coordinators

Rachel Chua from ICOMP / Kyoko Shiota from JOICFP / Hyun Hee Jung from PPFK / Kate Tibone from PAI / Duanne Puniputt from PPAT / Nino Susanto from Youth Coalition / Prateek Suman from Youth Coalition

APA Coordinating Partners

RD Marte from ARROW / NAPY / Neha Sood from Youth Coalition / Agniva Lahiri from APCRSH Steering Committee/NAPY /Sya Dunita Kamaruddin from IPPF ESEAOR / Suzanne Ko from IWHC

Japan announces Global Health Issues as a main agenda of TICAD IV and G8 Summit in 2008

November 25, 2007

In a statement delivered at the International Symposium on PEOPLE-CENTRED HEALTH CARE: REORIENTING HEALTH SYSTEMS IN THE 21ST CENTURY in Tokyo on November 25, Mr. Masahiko Koumura, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan, announced that Japan will take up, and call for a stronger engagement of the international community in Global Health, at the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV), and the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit to be held in Japan in 2008. The Gobal Health Working Group of the 2008 Japan G8 Summit NGO Forum, a group of 13 Japanese NGOs including JOICFP, advocating for making Global Health a main agenda item along with Climate Change, and Africa, welcomes today's development and has expressed their eagerness to participate in the policy formulation.

Minister Koumura's address was welcomed on the following points:

- At TICAD IV, Japan intends to take up the issue of health in Africa, and at the G8 Summit, the wider issue of Global Health,

- Japan invites civil society and all key stakeholders in developing a common framework for action shared by the international community,

- The address refers not only to the development of health-related human resources that the 2006 WHO Health Report points out as lacking by more than 4 million in developing countries, but also to the retention of health personnel.

The Global Health Working Group expects Japan's continuous leadership on Global Health in the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit , as it did at the G8 Kyushu Okinawa Summit in 2000 that contributed to the development of global measures against infectious diseases.

In his address, Minister Koumura stated the development of an international framework for action on Global Health. The Global Health Working Group believes that, in order to materialize this Japanese initiative, it is essential to address the following issues:

1. The International Framework for Action should come up with a concrete action plan to achieve international goals that have already been agreed, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The framework has to become itself a comprehensive strategy to strengthen existing international initiatives.

2. The framework needs to promote mutual intervention of a disease-specific approach and health system strengthening, and should expand and strengthen both approaches.

3. In formulating the Framework for Action, it is essential for G8 countries to increase ODA in order to procure financial resources necessary for achieving the goals. As the host government, Japan should decide to increase ODA.

4. The framework should address recruitment, stable employment, and prevention of brain drain of health personnel to achieve human resource retention.

The Global Health Working Group:

The Global Health Working Group is an issue-based working group organized under the 2008 Japan G8 Summit NGO Forum, a civil platform organized by Japanese NGOs' broad coalition of about 100 NGOs for the 2008 G8 Summit. Through advocacy activities, the Global Health working group aims to urge the G8 governments to make political and financial commitments to resolve health-related MDGs.

NEW RESOURCE - MDG MONITORING WEBSITE

For those of you who have not yet heard about it: On November 1^st, a new MDG Monitor website was launched by the UN along with Google and Cisco. According to the website, “It is designed as a tool for policymakers, development practitioners, journalists, students and others to:

TRACK progress through interactive maps and country-specific profiles

LEARN about countries' challenges and achievements and get the latest news

SUPPORT organizations working on the MDGs around the world”

One can quickly check global comparison of data on all MDGs, and a Google Earth map locates ongoing projects related to the MDGs. You can also subscribe to a “google/MDG” newsfeed.

The website address is: http://www.mdgmonitor.org.

Women News Network - Film Segment:

http://womennewsnetwork.vodpod.com:80/video/416937-fistual-hospital-3

Film Website: http://www.walktobeautiful.com/- Engel Entertainment

The feature-length documentary A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from obstetric fistula, devastating childbirth injuries and embark on a journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, these women are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame. The trials they endure -- and their attempts to rebuild their lives -- tell a universal story of hope, courage, and transformation.

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Obstetric fistula is an injury of childbearing that has been relatively neglected, despite the devastating impact it has on the lives of girls and women. It is usually caused by several days of obstructed labour, without timely medical intervention — typically a Caesarean section to relieve the pressure. The consequences of fistula are life shattering: The baby usually dies, and the woman is left with chronic incontinence. Because of her inability to control her flow of urine or faeces, she is often abandoned or neglected by her husband and family and ostracized by her community. Without treatment, her prospects for work and family life are greatly diminished, and she is often left to rely on charity. http://www.endfistula.org/q_a.htm

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"A Walk to Beautiful" Film Synopsis

Ayehu, Almaz, Zewdie, Yenenesh and Wubete suffered through prolonged, unrelieved obstructed labor in a country with few hospitals and even fewer roads to get to them. Although they survived the often-fatal childbirth experience, they were left with a stillborn baby and feeling, as Ayehu tells us, that "even death would be better than this." The obstructed labor has left each of them incontinent. In most of their cases, this is as a result of an obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal. We discover Ayehu, 25, living in a makeshift shack behind her mother's house where she's hidden for four years, shunned by siblings and neighbors alike. She hesitantly begins her journey on foot, and once she gets to the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, she realizes for the first time that she isn't the only person in the world suffering from this problem. At the hospital we meet Almaz, a woman also in her 20s who was abducted by her now-husband in a village market and has suffered from double fistula for three years.

Zewdie, 38, has five children longing for their mother to be well. Though abandoned by her husband, Zewdie is supported by the strong extended family that surrounds her. As for Wubete and Yenenesh, both 17, early marriage and their small physical stature (the result of undernourishment and heavy labor) determined the tragic outcome of their first pregnancies. For these two girls a cure is not simple. We're with them as they struggle with disappointing news and later as their youthful determination triumphs. We follow each of these women on their journey to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, where they find solace for the first time in years, and we stay with them as their lives begin to change.

Through the intimate experiences all five share, we are no longer in the heart of Africa - we are in the hearts of these women. And through their eyes we also reveal a larger story, that of the seemingly intractable problems facing women in the developing world, including malnutrition, child marriage, and lack of obstetric care.

The below resource may be of particular interest to APA Members as it talks about Making Family Planning a part of the PRSP process, one of the issues that was idenitifed for APA Small Grants projects and evaluation.

Making Family Planning Part of the PRSP Process: A Guide for Incorporating Family Planning Programs into Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. "Family planning is one of many strategies that can slow population growth and reduce demographic pressure, which can help countries lift themselves out of poverty. Reduced population sizes mean decreased burden on national expenditures for education, health, and other social services, as well as less strain on the environment and natural resources... This guide is designed to help family planning champions - including civil society and NGOs, international and donor organizations, and interested government officials - and other stakeholders promote the inclusion of family planning issues and programs into Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Countries prepare PRSPs to qualify for loans and debt relief from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). As a condition of receiving assistance, the PRSPs must outline the macroeconomic and social policies countries will adopt to alleviate poverty and, ultimately, accelerate progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). From the perspective of family planning advocates, the PRSPs can demonstrate the government's commitment to devise, fund, and implement family planning initiatives. From the perspective of governments and PRSP planners, satisfying unmet need for family planning is an innovative approach for reducing poverty that can help countries more easily achieve a range of socioeconomic goals..." This publication was produced for review by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Prepared by Anita Bhuyan, Maria Borda, and William Winfrey of the Health Policy Initiative, Task Order 1; July 2007 [64 Pages, PDF]

View full text

The South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality

This website hosts information on a comprehensive range of issues related to sexuality. It is a rich resource for activists, academics, researchers, students and policymakers working on sexuality and related issues of sexual and reproductive rights and health, HIV and AIDS, violence against women, sex work, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender issues, and other issues related to sexuality. The website also hosts an online library search engine that provides a listing for all materials in the Resource Centre library.

http://www.asiasrc.org/

HIV and Men who have Sex with Men in Asia and the Pacific

UNAIDS, September 2006

This publication provides information about successful initiatives from six different countries-Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Hong Kong and New Zealand. Men living with HIV provide invaluable contributions in programme development, implementation and evaluation. The six programmes examined in this publication offer varied and interesting insights into how HIV programmes for communities of men who have sex with men have been designed and implemented in the Asia and Pacific region.

http://data.unaids.org/Publications/IRC-pub07/JC901-MSM-AsiaPacific_en.pdf

Living on the Outside

Health and Development Networks, 2006

This primer provides a brief overview of the discussions that took place as part of the HIV Stigma Project and sets out a definitive position with specific recommendations about how HIV stigma can be tackled. This report adds richness and vitality, for it is derived from a range of experts, commentators and people living with HIV/AIDS, and hopefully enables fresh insights into what is proving to be the most intractable feature of the HIV epidemic. The primer includes numerous supporting statements from key stakeholders and contributors. Living on the Outside is a summary and synthesis of four individual publications on HIV-related stigma.

http://www.hdnet.org/library/stigma/Stigma-Primer-final.pdf

Unveiling the Truth

Health and Development Networks and the AIDS-Care-Watch Campaign, 2006

This publication provides an overview of presentations and discussions around HIV-related stigma at the International AIDS Conference in 2006. It provides a unique snapshot of the current state of HIV stigma, and forms part of what must be a robust, committed and tireless fight against the most damaging phenomenon of the HIV epidemic.

http://www.hdnet.org/library/unveilingthetruth.pdf

Hopkins Report: Next Generation Contraceptive Implants are Cheaper,

Posted by: "Inform" inform@jhuccp.org informccp

Thu Nov1,2007 8:59am (PST)

Publication Announcement

October 26, 2007

Hopkins Report: Next Generation Contraceptive Implants are Cheaper, Highly Effective, and Available Now

Baltimore, MD-The next generation of contraceptive implants offer an extremely effective way to expand family planning choices for women and reduce the incidence of maternal mortality worldwide, according to the latest issue of Population Reports, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The new contraceptive implants are matchstick-sized plastic rods inserted just under the skin of a woman's upper arm. The new one-rod system Implanon, the two-rod system Jadelle, and Sino-Implant (II), another two-rod system available in some countries, will replace Norplant, the original six-capsule contraceptive implant system that will be unavailable after 2008, according to the 20-page Hopkins report.

"Programs may want to add the new implants to their method mix, and programs currently offering Norplant should plan for a transition," according to co-authors Deepa Ramchandran and Ushma Upadhyay who prepared "Implants: The Next Generation" and its 12-page companion report, "Implants: Tools for Providers."

The new implants offer the same advantages of the old system, but are easier and quicker to insert and remove and may be lower in price. Once inserted, implants require no action on the part of the client and are one of the most effective ways to prevent pregnancy. Five pregnancies in 10,000 users are expected during the first year of use, compared to 800 pregnancies out of 10,000 users with oral contraceptives.

Evidence suggests that demand for implants is high and that more women would choose implants if they could. Clients express satisfaction with its convenience and long-lasting effectiveness. Depending on the type of implants, they can be effective for three to five years. Fertility returns immediately upon removal. In addition, since implants contain no estrogen (a progestin hormone is released by the rods) they are suitable for breastfeeding women.

A chief concern with first-generation Norplant was its high cost of $27 per set. Of next generation implants, the cheapest is Sino-Implant (II), which has a wholesale price of about US $4.50. While the initial cost of implants is high, they can be cost-effective when used for several years.

Family planning program managers can use the 20-page Population Reports issue to:

* Decide how to adopt the new implants into their method mix
* Prepare their staff to provide the new implants
* Meet the demand for implants by assuring availability and good-quality services.

Health care providers can use the companion issue "Implants: Tools for Providers" to review important elements of providing good-quality services to new and continuing users of implants. It also offers tools for counseling women and helping them to use implants with satisfaction.

In recent months, the INFO Project has directed global attention to two other effective methods with low prevalence in developing countries: the intrauterine device, or IUD, and injectable contraceptives. With the addition of implants, these methods offer women a wider range of contraceptive options to meet their reproductive intentions.

The INFO Project also hosts the Implants Toolkit (http://www.implantstoolkit.org/), a Web site that provides up-to-date and accurate information, resources, and tools related to implants for various audiences. It includes information for providers, trainers, policy makers, program managers, and others. The IUD Toolkit and Injectables Toolkit offer similar resources.