Project

India Casts a Light on Mothers Long in the Dark

Despite rapid economic growth, India remains a land of great disparity. The status of the country's maternal health, which is affected by region, income, education, caste and religion, reflects the nation's socio-economic diversity.

This project assesses India's efforts to improve its maternal health and explore why Assam, a northeastern state known for its beauty yet plagued by high levels of poverty, has the nation's highest maternal mortality rate. Reporter Hanna Ingber Win travels with boat clinics along the Brahmaputra River to visit remote villages that do not have electricity, toilets or roads, let alone health services.

In Muslim island villages, families marry off their daughters as young as 12 years old, taking them out of school, isolating them from their support services and increasing the likelihood of domestic violence and high fertility rates. Girls under the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than those in their 20s. In tribal villages on the other end of the river, impoverished families have been displaced from their homes by land erosion time and again.

These geographically and socially isolated island families depend on boats to access services. If the water levels are too high or low, if night falls or if a boat needs repair, no pregnancy or postpartum emergency can overcome the dictates of the river. The mothers must wait. But not all have the luxury of time.

June 09, 2010 | True/Slant

Looking for hope in child brides

I had written about child marriage before. When I went to Ethiopia, I visited a program for girls who had fled early marriage in their villages and ended up in the capital Addis Ababa. I met a classroom full of such young girls. With their schoolbooks in hand, they looked like kids, not brides. I talked to some of the girls in depth about how their desire to continue their schooling had pushed them to leave their families and traditions behind and flee to what they hoped would be a better life. These girls had dreams, and the courage to pursue them.

May 30, 2010 | GlobalPost

India: Married as Children

Growing up in a small village in northeastern India, Hasina Khatun spent her days helping her aunt around the house and playing with her siblings. She did not drop out of school; she never started. Hasina began menstruating at the age of 13 and soon after her aunt, who raised her after her mother died, told her it was time to get married. Hasina did not understand what her aunt meant, or that her life was about to change dramatically.