With access to family planning services, supportive care, and the information needed to make good choices, women with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), including women with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), in many cases can lead healthy sexual and reproductive lives. Like all other women, women with HIV have the right to make their own decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. Health care programs and providers can help women with HIV and their partners make and carry out informed reproductive health decisions.

Only breastmilk offers infants and young children complete nutrition, early protection against illness, and safe, healthy food--all at once. Nearly all babies are breastfed to some extent, but far less than half are breastfed in the most beneficial way. Better breastfeeding offers triple value: important improvements in child survival and health, better health for mothers, and temporary contraception. What can governments, programs, and health care providers do to support and enable women to breastfeed better?  

 Today's young people are the AIDS generation. They have never known a world without HIV. Millions already have died. Yet the HIV/AIDS epidemic among youth remains largely invisible to adults and to young people themselves. Stopping HIV/AIDS requires comprehensive strategies that focus on youth. Of the over 60 million people who have been infected with HIV in the past 20 years, about half became infected between the ages of 15 and 24. Today, nearly 12 million young people are living with HIV/AIDS. Young women are several times more likely than young men to be infected with HIV.

 This issue of Population Reports focuses on ending violence against women.  It tackles primarily two types of violence: 1) abuse of women within marriage and other intimate relationships; and 2) coerced sex, whether it takes place in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood.  The first part contains the editor's summary and an article entitled  The World Takes Notice.  Intimate partner abuse is discussed thoroughly and is supported by tables presenting various statistics on relevant issues such as help seeking by phys

 Each year, an estimated 585,000 women in developing countries die from complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and unsafe abortion.  Virtually all of these maternal deaths are preventable.  Although many countries have designed programs to prevent hemorrhage, obstructed labor, infection, and pregnancy-induced hypertension, unsafe abortion remains a neglected area.  Up to 20 million unsafe abortions are performed each year, and 10-50% are associated with a need for emergency medical care for complications.  At pres

 Health care providers can help solve the problem of violence against women if they learn how to ask clients about violence, become better aware of signs that can identify victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse, and help women protect themselves by developing a personal safety plan. Everyone can do something to help promote nonviolent relationships. Women's advocates in the US have used the "power and control" framework for many years to describe how some men use violence to dominate their partners and maintain control with the relationship.

 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can cause lifelong pain, infertility, life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, blindness in newborns, and death.  In addition, HIV infections are transmitted more easily in the presence of STDs.  This report discusses the extent, diagnosis, treatment, management, and prevention of STDs.  A graph shows new cases of trichomoniasis, genital chlamydia, genital papillomavirus, gonorrhea, genital herpes, syphilis, chancroid, and

 This issue of POPULATION REPORTS is dedicated to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and its prevention.  Contents include 1) The Extent of the Problem, 2) How is the Virus Spread?  3) Mass Media Programs for the General Public, 4) Programs for People at High Risk, 5) Counseling, 6) Evaluation, 7) Family Planning and AIDS prevention, 8) Lessons from Family Planning Programs, and 9) a Bibliography.  Some of the highlights are entitled 1) AIDS toll gr

 The 2 greatest health risks for women in their reproductive years are pregnancy and childbirth.  This is especially true in developing countries, where more than half a million women die each year in pregnancy or childbirth.  A concerted effort by families, communities, and health care professionals, especially maternal health care providers, can make childbearing safer.  Maternal health care providers, as well as referral centers, have a responsibility t

 This issue of "Population Reports" is focused on immunization against childhood diseases.  Such efforts save the lives of 1 million children in developing countries each year; however, over 3.5 million additional children are killed or disabled by diseases that immunization could have prevented.  At present, fewer than half of 1-year-olds have been immunized against the major preventable diseases.  Efforts are now underway to expand immunization

 This review assesses the extent and causes of infertility throughout the world, particularly that caused by sexually transmitted diseases (STDs); discusses infertility therapy and prevention; and outlines the potential role of family planning programs in remedying the problem.  For both sexes, infection, often caused by STDs, is the most common preventable cause of infertility.  Treatment of either primary infertility (inability to have any children at all) or secondary infertility (inability to ha

 This publication examines existing community-based distribution (CBD) programs for family planning and other health care measures and discusses some principles of organization and management.  CBD programs have 4 essential features:  community residents who are not health professionals deliver supplies and services, services are delivered to communities or households rather than to clinics, CBD workers operate without day-to-day supervision, and many record keeping, diagnostic, and screening proced

 Since about 1 of every 10 children born in developing countries dies of diarrheal complications before age 5, this report establishes rationale, composition, and production of oral rehydration therapy (ORT) for treatment of childhood diarrhea.  In this context, ORT is defined as a solution of water, sugar, and mineral salts to be drunk to replace the water and salts lost via stool and urinary output during diarrheal diseases.  The effect of ORT is to counteract dehydration, the most direct cause of

 Twenty years of adverse publicity have begun to affect cigarette smoking habits in the United States.  Between 1964-75 the percentage of males smoking declined from 52 to 39, females 34 to 52.  British surveys show half of 60,000 physicians quit smoking between 1951-65.  In the developing countries, however, tobacco is associated with western affluence and modernity.  Consumption increases 5% annually.