Women & Children - Health, Death, Disaster?

The conclusion of a US Agency for International Development funded study on Population and Health issues presented a bleak picture recently. The survey exposed a substantial gap between family health knowledge, contraceptive knowledge, and the use of solutions in the local population.

*The Facts -

96% married women know about modern methods.

Only 22% use them.

1 in 4 married women has a need for family planning, but does not know how to go about fulfilling that need.

More than one-third deaths of women aged 25 to 29 years are owing to maternal causes.

35% women receive no pre-natal care during their pregnancies.

Only 44% married women have heard of AIDS. However, they have NO actual knowledge of the causes and precautions of HIV or AIDS.

20% know that using a condom can prevent AIDS but less than half will benefit from this knowledge.

One-third births take place within 24 months of a previous birth.

47% children aged between 12 to 23 months receive all recommended vaccines.

Over 9 of every 100 children die before they celebrate their 5th birthday.

* 95, 000 families across Pakistan were individually contacted in this survey.

Sadly, it doesn't seem like we are going to have the progressive and promising future that we were aiming for.

Love/Luck/Perfection... I'm rambling... thinking out loud... 'scusi moi.

I used to believe in my lucky socks, magic sea shells and gratitude rocks - I used to be an advocate of Luck, Love, and Perfection – Now I only wonder about the realities of the three abstracts - Are these all that we run after perpetually our whole lives? Do they really exist?

Luck – Will hanging up a horse-shoe change your life? Or perhaps investing in a Rabbit’s paw? Maybe I’ve become a bit of a cynic... In truth, I want to believe, and there are those rare circumstances when people make me want to believe in Luck so badly. I wish I got that ‘lucky’ just once?!


Love – The definition of many different relationships and feelings – friends, family, and children – these are 'loves' that we often don’t have to prove we deserve, we feel them, we have them and share them (usually unconditionally) – of course, there are exceptions here too. Interestinging though, the kind of Love we most yearn for, hope for, search for, and want to get lucky with – can exist only between a man and a woman (also a man and a man, or a woman and a woman – hey, whatever works for you!)– A Fairytale, possibly? What do I know…? I am trying so hard to be a cynic! This Love happens to be the most complicated kind of Love. Especially today, when people are nothing but fickle, one way or another- they’re either going to cheat on you, or act like a martyr, or leave you when the realization strikes them that they were not in love with you to begin with – that their definitions of Love are different from yours - Enter, Perfection...? Or you will do all these things to someone who ‘loves’ you. You see!? In the case of Love, you need Luck the MOST! Let’s hope you only fall in love and not fall from grace in the process *tough one*.


Perfection - A standard we ‘create’ (even breed) in our minds, over time, based on experiences, observations, and preferences. Although, when we go out to find this ‘Perfect-ness’ we realize it does not exist, we are at quite a loss. We even learn (sometimes painfully) that as we aim for Perfection it is a moving target! Either we eventually see imperfection in what we believed to be perfect, or we alter our perception of Perfection during our search for it. All this running around eventually will tire us, and we’ll wonder if we should stop looking for Perfection- continuing to live our mediocre, non-perfect lives. Then shall we turn again to hope for some Luck to come our way…? *sigh*


Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… I'm just trying to see that rainbow (made up with colours of Luck/Love/Perfection).