25 h. ago ‘Some of these diseases are in the Bible’: despair as cuts halt progress on age

They are debilitating afflictions that people don’t know about, don’t understand and struggle to pronounce. Now health workers fear they will surge in Africa as USAID-funded drug distribution programmes are cutSince 2013, for around two weeks each year, Sulaiman Tarawallie has pulled on his community drug distributor (CDD) uniform and gone from household to household in his remote farming community to hand out medication to fight river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. Once he has completed the rounds of his village, he heads further out to take the drugs to even more remote homes – keeping the diseases that had plagued generations at bay with a handful of pills.But this year, Tarawallie, who works as a community health worker and primary school teacher in Sierra Leone’s northern Bombali district, will not be making his annual trip. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Sierra Leone has a problem with the drug Kush. Why are these women not being helped?

Sierra Leone's government has declared a public health emergency over the drug Kush.

Events

5 d. ago Sierra Leone declared an emergency over a powerful synthetic drug but women were left behind

A year ago, Sierra Leone's government declared a public health emergency over the cheap synthetic drug called kush

Events

5 d. ago The Christian right has set the US on the road to Gilead. Without a fight, other nations may follow | Deborah Frances

Organisations that pumped money into overturning Roe v Wade are making inroads in Europe. Women’s rights are truly at riskWith Donald Trump as president, there is now a heavy strain of Christian nationalism driving the US political agenda. From draconian abortion policies to ending birthright citizenship, some of Trump’s first executive orders sound startlingly like something out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian novel turned TV show set in Gilead, a fundamentalist, fascist version of the US where women have no rights. But it is urgent we understand that what is happening in the US could happen here. This road to Atwood’s Gilead is charting a course straight through the UK and Europe, and we may well be sleepwalking on to it.In November 2024 I debated with the American conservative lawyer Erin Hawley at the Oxford Union. The motion was “This house regrets the overturning of Roe v Wade”, the US supreme court’s landmark decision that once protected the right to h...

Politics

9 d. ago Alabama can't prosecute groups who help women travel to get an abortion, federal judge says

A federal judge has ruled that the Alabama attorney general can't prosecute groups who help Alabama women obtain abortions in another state

Events

2 w. ago Sierra Leone debates decriminalizing abortion as women and girls endanger their lives

Sierra Leone could become the second country in West Africa to decriminalize abortion

Events

2 w. ago A tale of two conferences: women against women as ‘poison of patriarchy’ returns and abortion fight intensifies

Last week, anti-choice campaigners emboldened by current US politics met in New York at the same time as UN delegates gathered to address the widespread inequalities women face. The battle to protect rights has never felt more urgentIn a meeting room on the 27th floor of a swish Manhattan hotel, Denise Mountenay is telling the audience that the right to abortion is “Nazi thinking.” Mountenay regrets her own abortions, and says she has been called by God to spread the word that she and other women “were lied to, deceived, pressured into making the most horrible choice: to choose death instead of life”.She goes on to list reasons why abortion is “not a safe procedure. [That’s what] they want woman to think – that is a lie.” Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago Biased laws and poverty driving huge rise in female prisoners – report

First such study finds laws on abortion, debt and dress help increase rate of women being jailed twice as fast as for menPoverty, abuse and discriminatory laws are driving a huge rise in the number of women in prison globally, according to a new report.With the rise of the far right and an international backlash against women’s rights, the research said there was a risk that laws would increasingly be used to target women, forcing more behind bars. Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago Sierra Leone’s immigration chief fired after footage showed him with fugitive drug lord

President sacks Alusine Kanneh after video of him with Johannes Leijdekkers, one of Europe’s most wantedSierra Leone’s president has fired the head of the immigration service days after footage was published showing him receiving a birthday gift from a fugitive Dutch drug kingpin.The footage of Alusine Kanneh being handed a present by Johannes Leijdekkers – which has not been independently verified by the Guardian – was published by the investigative outlet Follow the Money and the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad on Friday. Continue reading...

Events