May 7, 2012
I went to Punta Gorda, Belize Central America to train Mayan women to deliver babies in their communities using Hesperian's A Book for Midwives. Punta Gorda is a town in the southernmost part of Belize with a small hospital. Around the town are numerous Mayan villages. There is a bus service that goes two days a week to most of the villages, but for obvious reasons that is not a reliable way to get to medical help when a woman is in labor. Some of the villages might have one person who owned a truck and they soon became tired of being asked to transport people to town. They were especially leery of women in labor who might deliver in route and make a bloody mess in the process!
May 03, 2012
In a new post on National Geographic’s blog, Hesperian Executive Director Sarah Shannon writes about her experience using Where There Is No Doctor in Central America in the 1980s, how the world we live in has been transformed by technology since then, and the urgent ongoing need for accessible health information. Sarah writes, “I was only 22 when I arrived in the Salvadoran refugee camp in rural Honduras. Refugees were streaming over the border, running for their lives in the midst of a civil war. They were malnourished, terrified, wounded, and carried nothing but the clothes on their backs. For my part, I had a suitcase full of clothes, and a copy of the book Where There Is No Doctor given to me by a mentor as I was packing….” To read the full article, click here.
April 13, 2012
Hesperian is deeply saddened and outraged by the murder of Bangladeshi labor activist Aminul Islam. Aminul was an organizer at the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and a local leader for the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF). He fought tirelessly alongside workers, unions, and organizations from Bangladesh and around the world to raise poverty-level wages, improve safety in response to tragic factory fires, and promote fair and healthy work in Bangladesh.