Panos Institute, India and Zubaan Publications (formerly Kali for Women) have come out with a new publication, The Unheard Scream: Reproductive Health and Women's Lives in India, containing the best of long essays that emerged from three cycles of the Panos media fellowship programme on reproductive health and rights of women in India.

The fellowship programme explored the reproductive health and rights scenario in India, and how India has fared since the 1995 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) at Cairo that brought about a "paradigm shift" in the way population is conceptualized. The shift involved going beyond maternal health and family planning to the broader framework of reproductive health and rights.

This revelatory collection of essays by journalists explores a range of issues concerning the social and economic roots of illnesses, disease and death among women in India. The topics range from the quinacrine sterilization scandal to the rip-off that is the assisted reproduction industry, from the declining age of marriage among Muslim girls in Malabar to the state of sterilisation camps in Uttar Pradesh and sex-selective abortions in Punjab, from the legal rights of HIV-infected women to lack of access to maternal and child health services in remote hills and tribal districts of India.

The book contains essays by Rajashree Dasgupta (The Telegraph), Rupa Chinai (Times of India), Sreelatha Menon (Indian Express), K.P.M.Basheer (The Hindu), Dhirendra K. Jha (The Pioneer), Sandhya Srinivasan (Issues in Medical Ethics), Geetanjali Gangoli (School of Policy Studies, University of Bristol), Rupa Chinai, Lyla Bavadam (Frontline), Annu Anand (Press Institute of India), T.K. Rajalakshmi (Frontline), Swati Bhatacharjee (Ananda Bazar Patrika), Vasant Bhosale (Pudahri Noe), Manisha Bhalla (Dainik Bhaskar).

The book's editor is Dr Mohan Rao who teaches at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the author of Malthusian Arithmetic: From Population Control to Reproductive Health (forthcoming) and has edited Disinvesting in Health: The World Bank's Prescriptions for Health (2000).

The book is priced at Rs. 400.

For further enquiries, please contact:
Urvashi Butalia / Preeti Gill / Jaya Bhattacharji at:

Zubaan,
K-92, First Floor,
Hauz Khas Enclave,
New Delhi - 110016
India.

Tel: (+91-11) 26521008 / 26864497

Email: zubaanwbooks@vsnl.net

About the Panos Institute
Panos means 'torch' in Amharic and classical Greek, while a 'panas' in Nepal is a lamp lit when people gather round to discuss important issues. The word Panos symbolises the principle aims of the organisation -- to illuminate and provide insights on a wide variety of issues and their importance to the least privileged and most marginalised sections of society, create a platform for informed debate around such issues, and ensure that such perspectives reach decision makers. Panos India is part of a family of Panos Institutes worldwide.

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