On 21st September, Ryoichi Suzuki, Deputy Executive Director, JOICFP, delivered a supplementary training lecture to 24 JOCV nurses, public health nurses, and midwives soon to be dispatched overseas, at JICA Global Plaza in Tokyo.

Suzuki told the trainees that there were many urgent health areas to be addressed, including maternal and infant mortality, HIV/AIDS and STIs, female genital mutilation, fistula, and adolescent sexual and reproductive health, and that there were many traditional and religious barriers to dealing with them.

• These areas are critical because 529,000 women a year, one a minute, die of pregnancy and delivery related issues, and 99% of them are in developing countries.
• There are 45 million induced abortions a year, 19 million of which are unsafe, leading to the death of 68,000 women.
• 350 million couples a year have no access to comprehensive family planning services, and there are 76 million unwanted/unexpected pregnancies.
• There are 40 million people infected with HIV, 13 million AIDS orphans, and there were 4.9 million new infections in 2005, more than half being women and two-thirds being in sub-Saharan Africa.
• There are 1.25 billion people between the ages of 10 to 19 years, every year 14 million adolescents become mothers, and one-third of women in developing countries become mothers before the age of 20.
• Over 2 million women suffer from fistula, growing by 50-100 thousand a year; more than 130 million women have suffered FGM, growing by 2 million a year.
• Around 2 million women and girls a year are trafficked for the sex industry.

Suzuki asked the volunteers to remember these global issues and to find ways to address them at the local levels where they would be dispatched, and to link with their counterparts with team spirit. He emphasized that Japan’s role was not just about bilateral aid, but also “people to people,” and that JOCVs were an integral part of this.