Girls were allegedly told they were to have Covid-19 vaccinations but were cut by doctor after being sedated
Egypt’s public prosecutor has ordered the immediate trial of a father on charges of forcing his three young daughters to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), after he told them they were going to be vaccinated against coronavirus. The doctor involved will also go on trial.
The procedure was banned in 2008 and criminalised in 2016.
Continue reading...What happens when your natural sleeping pattern is at odds with the rest of the world?
For as long as she can remember, Jenny Carter has gone to bed late and not woken up until late the following morning, sometimes even the early afternoon. Growing up, she didn’t have a bedtime, and at university she preferred to write her essays between 6pm and 10pm. She loves evenings. They’re when she feels the most creative and can concentrate the best. But that’s not when her employer or society expects her to be productive.
“Going to bed at a ‘normal’ time feels so unnatural to me,” she says. “But society just doesn’t cater for people whose sleep cycle doesn’t fit the generic 9 to 5.” She has got into trouble at work for her timekeeping, which has led to disciplinary action. “I’ve had to write off so many events, meetings and opportunities, because they were in the morning and I just knew I wouldn’t be awake.”
Continue reading...There’s a replacement to your pre-lockdown workout right outside your door. Experienced runners explain how to get started
The gyms, pools and squash courts are shut. Joe Wicks is showing you how to get fit in your living room, but really all you want to do is get out of your living room. Now is the time to go for a run.
If you are worried you’re not a running type, don’t be. I wasn’t either until I decided that I didn’t feel safe going to the gym in mid-March. Eight weeks later, I finished my first half-hour run, covering an apparently respectable 4.83km in the process. Almost anyone can be a runner, it turns out. So why not give it a try?
Continue reading...Following reports worldwide, experts are warning that pandemic is pushing back progress on prenatal and maternity care
After Denisa’s son was born premature at 26 weeks she was unable to hold him, but spent as much time as possible near his incubator so he could get used to her voice. By the time he was well enough to be held by his mother, a state of emergency had been declared in Slovakia and Denisa was told to vacate her bed and leave the hospital to make way for Covid-19 patients.
The rush of patients never came, but strict rules meant she was unable to see her baby until he was discharged six weeks later. “Instead of a hug, I went home empty-handed only with my head full of questions,” she says. “Each day without my baby was taking away my strength and harming my mental health.”
Continue reading...Author Bernardine Evaristo, broadcaster Hugh Pym, playwright James Graham and more pen letters to themselves, to be opened in May 2021
James Graham, playwright
Continue reading...This could be the perfect time for couples to boost their sex life
For many of us right now, sex couldn’t be further from our minds. Our usual routines have been turned upside down and the way we are living can be challenging for even the most harmonious of relationships. But what if we viewed this time as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset and refresh our sex lives?
The fact that sex isn’t a priority for a large proportion of people fits with findings from sex research along with, well, common sense. Stress and anxiety are known to reduce our sexual desire and a preoccupation with the news, our finances, the health of our loved ones, or how much is in our store cupboards, can understandably slow the wheels of our sex life to a standstill.
Continue reading...Campaigners welcome move to criminalise those carrying out FGM, but warn it will take time to eradicate practice entirely
Sudan looks set to outlaw female genital mutilation (FGM), in a significant move welcomed by campaigners.
Anyone found carrying out FGM will face up to three years in prison, according to a document seen by the Guardian.
Continue reading...I’m mixed race and ‘culturally white’, and seemed to be a disappointment to my father – but we just weren’t close
My dad said it to me when I was seven years old and it stung like vinegar on a paper cut. Of all the things you throw at kids you never know which ones will stick. This one accidentally stuck. I’m not black enough. The phrase, the unblackness, was planted, and developed like an irksome bruise I only feel when I bend a certain way. It’s a scar tissue formed from acid poured into my wound after I was hit by the paternal truck of not-black-enoughness. An unexploded bomb that’s leaking mustard gas into my blood.
I’m fully grown now, but the comment still tinkles lightly on the piano of my mind. Whiteness is in my blood. Well, half of it. My mum’s never done an ancestry DNA test, but as a woman from north London who regularly burns in the British sun, it’s safe to assume she’s majority Caucasian. I’m mixed-raced and grew up in multicultural Brighton. When my parents split up, my dad stayed in Brixton and I was occasionally evacuated to him on school holidays. As a single parent, aware of her son’s racial identity, my mum rallied, and founded Mosaic, a support group for mixed-parentage families. Brighton is inherently liberal, but “How come your mum’s white, but you’re not?” was the power ballad of my childhood.
Continue reading...There will be no going back to ‘normal’. Our cherished concept of work is increasingly meaningless – the future belongs to those who understand the arts of life
The infantilising of the people by our leaders is horribly revealing of the English psyche. “Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.” Only it is not jam in this case, it is life-saving personal protective equipment. I specify “English” because Nicola Sturgeon addresses her nation as grownups and Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel pay their people the same respect. Now, armed with the knowledge that our prime minister bunked off Cobra meetings as this crisis unfolded, we are being told nothing can really be decided until he comes back from his convalescence. So we are stuck with ministers in supply teacher mode.
Everything has changed and we need to prepare for the new normal. Lockdown isn’t ending any time soon. There is no simple choice between saving lives and saving the economy; the two are intertwined. There is no going back to BC: before corona. Some of us knew this from day one, others are still in denial. There is the unmistakable feeling that a monumental shift in how we live is coming, one way or another, a shift that has long been latent. Those of us in rich countries have been intent on pushing the climate emergency into the future, but now our money won’t save us. Our vulnerability just might. But this requires humility. The idea that Boris Johnson will “bounce back” into his job is as ludicrous as thinking the economy will “bounce back”.
Continue reading...In the coronavirus pandemic, everyone is trying to create new rules by constantly, volubly judging each other. Better to realise we don’t know the pressures others are under
Before we went into lockdown, I was trying to persuade my mother to reduce her contact circle to five. It seems absurd, now that everyone of advanced age and comorbidities has been told to see no one at all, but way back then (three weeks ago), this seemed reasonable. She immediately bartered the number up to six. It was like negotiating with Tony Soprano: there was no way she was coming out of the deal without the upper hand. Then I asked her how she planned to tell the rest of her associates that they weren’t on the list, and she said: “Good heavens, I’m not going to tell them. That would be so rude!”
Then the list was reduced to zero, but mysteriously, one of the original six went round anyway to fix her letterbox. I asked what was the point of fixing her letterbox, when the only important letter she was going to get would be from the government, telling her not to have anyone round, irrespective of whether or not she had a defective letterbox. She said she would prefer to have less advice, and be given a lethal injection. “I wouldn’t mind,” she said, graciously. “I”m not sure whether the main impediment to euthanasia is whether or not you mind,” I observed, extremely calmly and not at all sarcastically.
Continue reading...Many people will get coronavirus at some point during this pandemic and in the majority of cases will be able to manage the illness themselves. Emma Hammett, a nurse and founder of First Aid for Life, offers some advice on how to look after people who have mild or moderate symptoms at home.
If you're looking after loved ones whose symptoms are severe or getting worse, you should seek medical help immediately – particularly if they are in a vulnerable group
New report calls for national surveys by governments to underline scale of worldwide abuse
The number of women and girls who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) could be much higher than previously estimated, as a new report shows the practice is carried out in more than 90 countries around the world.
The UN estimates that 200 million women and girls have undergone FGM. But this figure is drawn from only 31 countries – 27 in Africa – where national data has been collected.
Continue reading...A new report concludes that women are not being given epidurals and not being fully informed about pain relief by NHS trusts. Does a belief in natural births lie behind this?
Giving birth was, for Kate, like going “through a war”. She had repeatedly asked for an epidural; instead, she was allowed only gas and air and two paracetamol. She was “exhausted, dazed, torn, bloody and frightened” by the time her healthy son was placed in her arms.
“I asked three times for an epidural,” Kate says of her 26-hour labour to deliver her baby, who was back to back and breech. “The first time the midwives said I wasn’t far enough along. The second time, they said I didn’t need it. Finally, they said I was too far along.
Continue reading...Covid-19, first seen in Wuhan, China, last year, has infected tens of thousands of people and, as of Wednesday 4 March, killed more than 3,000 people globally.
As the world faces rising numbers of infections, the Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley, discusses what we can do to prevent it spreading
George Hood, a former US Marine, broke his own world record this month. Here’s how you can improve your technique
This month, George Hood – a 62-year-old former US Marine – broke the world planking record with a time of 8hr 15min 15sec, adding an extra 14 minutes on to the previous record. Hood had originally claimed the record in 2011 with a paltry 1hr 20min, before losing it in 2016 to Mao Weidong, a police officer from China, who broke the record with a time of 8hr 1min.
Eight hours is a long time spent doing anything, especially with your face hovering 20cm away from the floor of a gym, but the benefits of a good plank go a very long way. “The plank is excellent because it’s all about stability,” says Chris Magee, the head of yoga at Psycle London, and a former personal trainer, rugby player and martial artist. “That’s key to an active, healthy lifestyle. You want to feel – when you’re walking around, running around or even sitting down – that your spine is strong and protected.”
Continue reading...From the Gambia to Kenya, FGM has been fought most successfully at grassroots level. The world must pay heed
I underwent female genital mutilation at the age of seven, while on holiday in Djibouti. When I returned to school in the UK my teacher told me that this happened to “girls like me”.
Thankfully, this type of reaction is no longer common, and this country is much better equipped to protect girls at risk. FGM is now seen as a global issue, which we know has affected more than 200 million women and girls around the world.
Continue reading...Child had been taken by her family to have the procedure, still prevalent in the country despite new laws to combat it
A doctor has been arrested after the death of a 12-year-old girl he had performed female genital mutilation (FGM) on.
Nada Hassan Abdel-Maqsoud bled to death at a private clinic in Manfalout, close to the city of Assiut, after her parents, uncle and aunt took her for the procedure.
Continue reading...A study is looking into the coercive practice in Uganda, amid calls for the government to address the issue
Jane’s* husband likes breast milk. “He says he likes the taste of it, and that it helps him in terms of his health. He feels good afterwards,” said the 20-year-old from Uganda, who has a six-month-old baby.
Jane said her husband started asking for her milk the night she came home from the hospital after giving birth. “He said it was to help me with the milk flow. I felt it was OK.”
Continue reading...A long-term resolution to leave the car at home could help waistlines as well as the environment
Since 2011 Beijing has controlled traffic growth by allocating new licence plates in a bimonthly lottery. There is less than a one in 500 chance of getting a plate in each draw but winning might not be as wonderful as it first seems.
The impact of increased motorised travel extend beyond air pollution. In the UK the total distance walked each year dropped by 30% between 1995 and 2013, and the distance cycled in England and Wales in 2012 was just 20% of that in 1952 – but these changes have been slow and are difficult to study.
Continue reading...There are a dizzying number of apps promising to get you in shape – even if you can’t get to a gym. But can any of them keep our writers moving?
Price £15.49 a month.
What is it? A full-service experience from the Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth: not just workouts, but a complete meal planner – with food for breakfast, lunch and dinner – a daily guided meditation and a daily motivational article.
The experience I immediately regret declaring myself “intermediate” as the app launches into a punishing pilates workout. I am not very flexible at all, and it turns out that my baseline fitness leaves much to be desired in terms of core strength.
More frustrating is the fact that the various workouts are introduced as videos. Clearly, this is supposed to emulate a real pilates class, but when my phone tells me to lie face-down on the floor I can no longer see the screen. It is frustrating to have to repeatedly break out of the pose to check the next movement.
Worth a download? Only if you are single, enjoy cooking and are willing to hand control of your life to an app.
AH