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Girls in charge: How the Oky period tracker app empowers girls and helps to close the digital divide

March 25, 2025

Girls in charge: How the Oky period tracker app empowers girls and helps to close the digital divide

The Oky app gives girls of all abilities the information they need to manage their periods and answers their questions about sexual and reproductive health. As an inclusive digital solution created ‘by girls, for girls,’ it offers an entry point to practice and improve digital skills.

Midwives and Nurses: Pillars of Libya’s Health System

March 17, 2025

Midwives and Nurses: Pillars of Libya’s Health System

Once reliant on foreign health professionals, Libya is now strengthening its healthcare system by investing in local talent. By providing more modern and practice-oriented education, the country is equipping midwives and nurses with the skills to deliver quality care - ensuring better health outcomes based on capacity building.

A call to action: A new social impact campaign tackles menstrual taboos

February 28, 2025

A call to action: A new social impact campaign tackles menstrual taboos

A global campaign aims to tackle taboos, ignorance and misinformation about menstrual health and hygiene by using the award-winning German-Kenyan social impact film Impure as a catalyst for change.

AIDS Conference 2024: BACKUP’s Dialogues on HIV & Human Rights

September 19, 2024

AIDS Conference 2024: BACKUP’s Dialogues on HIV & Human Rights

BACKUP Health invited partners to explore strategies aimed at helping policymakers and civil society to safeguard access to HIV services for key vulnerable populations (KVPs).

AIDS Conference 2024: Germany Unites Global Efforts to End HIV/AIDS by 2030

August 8, 2024

AIDS Conference 2024: Germany Unites Global Efforts to End HIV/AIDS by 2030

“Break the stigma. Break the silence. Together we can end AIDS.” Germanys motto at the 25th International AIDS Conference

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Sexual and reproductive health and rights

Promoting the well-being of the most vulnerable members of society: mothers, children and adolescents

Progress has been slow in maternal, child and adolescent health. Globally, about 810 women die each day during pregnancy and childbirth (UNICEF, 2020). In 2019, over six million children and young adolescents died, of which 5.2 million were children under the age of five (UNICEF, 2020). Most of these deaths were preventable. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation is getting worse. Projections suggest that even a moderate decrease in the provision of pregnancy, childbirth and neonatal care could result in 28,000 additional maternal deaths and 168,000 newborn deaths. More than 47 million women in low- and middle-income countries could lose access to contraceptives, resulting in up to 7 million unintended pregnancies. 

To address these and related challenges, German development cooperation supports a many-faceted response, starting with universal access to information about sexual and reproductive health and to reliable methods of contraception. Health staff are trained and equipped to provide rights-based family planning, pre- and postnatal care and assisted deliveries, as well as treatment of sexually transmitted infections – including prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Young people are targeted with tailor-made programmes promoting healthy lifestyles through school health programmes, special youth clinics and GIZ’s ‘Join-in Circuit’. You can discover these German-supported approaches in the articles, studies and events on this page.

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