Reproductive Health
Chemical Postmaster Helps Deliver Contraceptive to
Testis
In one of the Population
Council’s reproductive health biomedical labs, biochemist and cell biologist
C. Yan Cheng and his colleagues have found a way to target a new drug, known
as Adjudin, to the testis in rats. This method prevents conception in males
without interfering with hormones, resulting in fewer side effects.
HIV and AIDS
Complex Role for Marriage in HIV Risk, Studies Find
If present patterns
continue, in the next decade more than 100 million girls will be child
brides, that is married before the age of 18, according to Council research.
“In some cultures, girls are married off at very young ages due to poverty,
custom, and in some cases the idea that it provides protection from HIV and
other threats. But our research clearly shows that marriage per se, and
child marriage especially, cannot be assumed to be a sexual safety zone,”
explains Council researcher Judith Bruce. “Girls married at a young age are
actually at a higher risk than unmarried girls for HIV infection in some
settings.” Delaying marriage, however, does not improve safety. “Delaying
marriage until the mid- to late-twenties often results in a period of
high-risk sex involving multiple or serial partners,” says Council
demographer John Bongaarts.
HIV and AIDS
Examining the Rollout of Pediatric Antiretroviral
Treatment in South Africa
“We are grossly
undersupplying antiretroviral drugs to children, and our prevention of
mother-to-child transmission program is not working at this site. As a
result children are dying in hoards,” explained one doctor who was
interviewed as part of a study of pediatric HIV treatment in South Africa.
While not all the findings were as grim as the one just quoted, the studies
revealed significant deficiencies in pediatric HIV treatment in South Africa.
Reproductive Health
Focused Antenatal Care Acceptable, Tricky to
Implement
Appropriate antenatal
care is a key element of programs to improve the health of mothers and
newborns. Recently the Population Council and partners studied antenatal
care in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. These investigations showed that a
focused approach, emphasizing quality of care over quantity, is acceptable,
but can be difficult to implement because of scarce resources and staff
turnover.
Focus On: Demography
New Book Explores Political Dimensions of
Population Growth
The demographic
transformation of the world in the 100 years between 1950 and 2050 will be
marked both by a vast expansion in human numbers and by the emergence of a
low-fertility, highly urbanized, and increasingly elderly world population.
These changes pose challenges for national governments and international
institutions. The responses those bodies have arrived at, or must now
formulate, are the subject of the new volume The Political Economy of
Global Population Change, a supplement to the Population Council’s
journal Population and Development Review.
Entire issue (PDF)
