Serra Sippel's blog

The Ugandan government plans to reintroduce and promote the female condom this fall, where it may give women another tool for safer sex negotiation and protection.

In the upcoming presidential debate on foreign policy issues, will candidates be asked to address sexual and reproductive health and human rights of women as a critical component to our nation's foreign policy?

Bush Administration appointees have tried to impose ideology on World Bank policy—most recently through attempts to strip reproductive health language from the Health, Nutrition and Population Strategy.

Serra Sippel is the Deputy Director at the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE).

Attention to the lives of orphans and vulnerable children has increased with celebrity adoptions of African children by Madonna and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and the opening of an elite school for girls in South Africa by Oprah Whinfrey. For decades children (defined as children under the age of 18) have been targets for acts of charity by celebrities, focusing on their special needs: food, education, vaccinations, and health care. But rarely addressed, if at all, are the very real sexual and reproductive health needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs).