Birth control

POPLINE bibliographic database on population, family planning, and related issues, is now available free of charge on the Internet. All 280,000 citations, representing published and unpublished literature, can be accessed for no charge. Maintained by the Johns Hopkins Population Information Program, Internet POPLINE is updated every two weeks. Approximately 10,000 records are added annually.

An international, nonprofit, nongovernmental institution that seeks to improve the wellbeing and reproductive health of current and future generations around the world and to help achieve a humane, equitable, and sustainable balance between people and resources. The Council conducts biomedical, social science, and public health research and helps build research capacities in developing countries.

Center for Communication Programs -- part of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Includes databases, Population Reports Journal, poster database, POPLINE and publications

Marion Stevens, treatment monitor with the Health Systems Trust, reflects on adolescent sexual and reproductive healthcare during Youth Month.

With June being Youth Month, it's important to consider and reflect on the area of adolescent sexual and reproductive healthcare. This is an area that is often ignored as we grapple with the reality that adolescents are choosing tobe sexually active, but cultural practices often limit open communication about sex with our cllildren. As nurses we have a responsibility to provide care of adolescents' sexual health, which also includes the results of unplanned pregnancies,abortion, spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV and maternal mortality and morbidity.

The first anti-AIDS vaginal gel to make it through late-stage testing failed to stop HIV infection in a study of 6,000 South African women, disappointed researchers announced Monday.

The diaphragm contraceptive device does not help to prevent HIV infection, according to the results of a three-year trial published in the Lancet today.

mothers2mothers (m2m) is a peer support program that aims to provide education and psychosocial support to HIV-positive pregnant women and new mothers, help women access existing health care services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT), and follow up with mothers and babies to ensure they receive appropriate medical care after delivery. While there has been much interest in innovative psychosocial support programs that complement PMTCT clinical services, only a few such programs exist, and there is very little data about their effectiveness. Although m2m is a well known program with anecdotal accounts of successfully supporting HIV-positive women, the program had yet to undergo an external evaluation. The Horizons Program of Population Council, in collaboration with Health Systems Trust, completed the first evaluation of m2m as part of its introduction in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG, 6 March 2007 (IRIN) - Alarming figures released by a South African provincial education department indicate that schoolgirl pregnancies have doubled in the past year, despite a decade of spending on sex education and AIDS awareness.

This year's Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)/Condom Week (12 - 18 February 2006) theme is - Just the two of us can prevent STIs - which aims to inspire individuals to seek STI treatment before they infect or re-infect their sexual partners.