French and Malian flags are flying throughout the capital city of Bamako today after French troops helped to liberate northern Mali from the radical Islamists who have occupied the region for almost a year. On Sunday, January 27, French and African troops took back the city of Gao, where jihadists used the Gao School of Nursing—once a thriving educational institution—as a base of operations.

In a sidebar in this year’s annual letter from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates encourages readers to donate their used mobile phones to IntraHealth International through the Hope Phones campaign.

By recycling used phones, IntraHealth earns funds that we then use to equip frontline health workers with mobile phones and other technology.

IntraHealth International’s new, $20.7 million project to expand HIV counseling and testing services in Zambia is now up and running, after its official launch in Lusaka on November 28, 2012. The HIV Testing and Counseling Project will bring high-quality services to selected urban and rural populations in Zambia.

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Twelve of the women who were forced out of their hospital beds when radical Islamists seized the city of Gao in northern Mali have finally been found and treated, thanks to the reinstatement of the Fistula Care Project in Mali.

Constance Newman, IntraHealth International’s senior team leader for gender equality and health, is helping to lead a new study on gender-based violence in Mongolia. The 15-month, $1.5 million research project is led by the Asia Foundation and the United Nations Population Fund.

Parker served as an expert source in the article titled “Maternal Health: More than an Instinct,” where she explained some of the challenges to combating maternal mortality worldwide, as well as some interventions that have been proven to work.

Education, family planning, and community health workers are all essential to reducing maternal mortality in Asia, says IntraHealth’s Laurie Noto Parker in Investing in Asia, a supplement to the December 21, 2012, issue of USA Today. http://doc.mediaplanet.com/all_projects/11102.pdf [6 MB pdf]