Health Articles

By Mary Stewart Burgher, AWC Denmark

We all love to see happy mothers and their smiling babies, but pregnancy and childbirth are often difficult and dangerous. They have become much safer for women: for example, maternal deaths are now expressed as the number per 100,000 live births – in contrast to newborn deaths, which are expressed as the number...

by Lisa O’Hearn, Munich International Women’s Club

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away…”* While a 2015 study by researchers from Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan found no evidence that this old Welsh proverb was true – adult consumers of one small apple per day had the same number of physician visits as those who did...

What Time is it?

by Stephanie Biery, AWC Berlin

I love to travel. I also love a good night’s rest. How do you combine these two experiences? According to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), jet lag occurs when our biological clock is disrupted. The NSF believes our bodies work on circadian rhythms, our internal 24-hour clock. Our sleep-wake cycles...

Stayin’ Alive

by Danielle Kuznetsov, AWO Moscow

Out of sight, out of mind. Isn’t that how much of life works, when the issue is not a quick fix? You will be reading this in October, after National Suicide Prevention Month in the United States has ended. September 10 was Worldwide Suicide Prevention Day, so for a brief moment this year, a...

Heart Pillow Project

by the Health Team with reports from Georgia Kallis, AWO Greece and Ann de Simoni, AIWC of Genoa

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and several FAWCO clubs participate in the Heart Pillow Project; here is news from two of them.

Georgia Kallis reported that AWO Greece has been sewing, stuffing, and delivering their AWOG Heart Pillows since...

Maternal Depression – Not Only Reserved for the Wealthy

By Dawn Parker, AWEP and Richard Ferreira, RN

The uncomfortable truth

1. Eighty percent of the world’s population lives in LAMICs (Low- and Middle-Income Countries);
2. Less than 20 percent of the world’s mental health resources are shared between all the LAMICs;
3. The burden of depression is 50 percent higher for females than for males;
4. Approximately...