The extremely low age of marriage for girls -- after the example of Muhammad's marriage to Aisha -- doesn't help, either. By Tan Ee Lyn for Reuters, August 30:
HONG KONG (Reuters) - High child mortality rates in conservative Afghanistan are linked not just to war but to mothers being uneducated and having little or no say when their children need medical help, a study has found.
Child mortality rates in Afghanistan are among the highest in the world, and one out of every five Afghan children (or 191 out of every 1,000 live births) will not survive beyond age five.
The study of 2,474 children from 1,327 households in Kabul province found that diarrhoea (32.5 percent), acute respiratory infection (41 percent), emaciation (12.4 percent) and stuntedness (39.9 percent) were among the most common health problems, said the article published in the latest issue of BioMed Central Public Health.
"As in other countries, the primary caregivers of small children in Afghanistan are their mothers; however, in this country, mothers are subject to a number of restrictions in the decision-making process regarding child healthcare," said the article published by a team of Afghan and Japanese researchers.
The researchers said they interviewed mothers of the children and found the problems correlated most closely with mothers not having any autonomy (79.1 percent) and education (71.7 percent).
Up to 18.3 percent of the mothers also delivered their first child before they were 16, which meant they were married when they were still children, the researchers wrote.
A shortage of basic material needs was also observed in 59.1 percent of the households.
The researchers defined a lack of maternal autonomy to mean mothers requiring permission from the head of the household to bring a child to the doctor, or if she required another person - usually a male relative - to accompany her to a clinic with the child.
Sharia Alert:
Afghanistan is deeply conservative and women's movements are still restricted in many parts of the country.
The researchers defined a lack of education as not having attended school for at least a year.
"The poor economic and educational status of these women, and their overall immaturity caused by a lack of learning opportunities may have resulted in difficulties in preventing illness in their children," they wrote.
They called for change in Afghan society. Families needed to be educated and the government must play its part, they said.
"Culturally appropriate programmes with multifaceted approaches that provide families and communities with education and reproductive health services can help stop child marriage," they wrote.
They appear to have no idea about the sort of resistance they will face, or why.
"Child mortality rates in Afghanistan are among the highest in the world, and one out of every five Afghan children (or 191 out of every 1,000 live births) will not survive beyond age five."
Before we start with the usual comments, let's remember that just about the same fraction of pregnancies in the U.S. end in abortion. These children-to-be never get to see any birthday at all, much less their 4th one.
Yeah, and the fact that they're not educated means that there are no female doctors, and they can't go to male doctors in most places. And if they do, it's still pretty tough to deliver a baby while only being able to see what's going on in a mirror and having to hold the mirror with one hand and yank the baby out with the other. Most of these girls are probably having babies at home.
That's actually way better than most of Islamic Africa (Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria), however, where having one's first baby at 16 is considered doing it late in life, and they're sent off to caves to have babies that they're not physically capable of having, due to their young age and the fact that even a 35-year-old mother of 5 requires several deep episiotomies when the mother is the victim of Type III fgm.
The fact that Afghanistan's been at war for the last 16 years might have something to do with it too, what with the displacement, lack of proper food, and lack of medical facilities. Oh, and the high rate of consanguinity causes high rates of genetic defects and disorders, so even in the West a disproportionate numbers of those babies would die. There was a study of Turkish and Moroccan babies born in Europe and their rate of infant mortality was 5x higher.
Ebonystone, if you want to get depressed rad 'America Alone' by Mark Steyn. He says that 70% of all Russian pregnancies are aborted.
Islamic Paradise...From article: High child mortality rates in conservative Afghanistan are linked not just to war but to mothers being uneducated and having little or no say when their children need medical help, a study has found...
If Allah wanted Afghanistan's literacy rate to go up and child mortality rate to go down, that's what would happen. But Allah does not will it.
Since Allah is not willing it is futile and unIslamic to even try. Trying to establish what Allah does not want established is haram.
Leaving these women and children in this impoverished desperate condition is halal...Yep, thats Islamic Paradise all right...
Ebonystone, if you want to get depressed rad 'America Alone' by Mark Steyn. He says that 70% of all Russian pregnancies are aborted.
Posted by: jdamn
Thanks, jdamn; I knew that it was over 50% in Russia (and in the former European republics), but didn't realize it was that high. It's possible Steyn is using figures from some years ago. I was just looking at "Historical Abortion Statistics, Russia" (just google that), and it shows a noticeable improvement in recent years: from 67% of pregnancies ending in abortion in 1996 to "only" 52% in 2006. Of course, that's still way too high. The Russian authorities should be making every effort to encourage Russians to have more children. Their new-found oil and gas wealth could be put to good use in pre-natal and newborn health care facilities, subsidies for extra children, etc. (Note, by "Russian", I mean ethnic "Russian", not just "resident in Russia".) Instead, Putin wastes time and rsources cozying up to the Iranians.
Bottom line: LEGALIZED INCESTUOUS PEDOPHILIA = a mixture for disaster (I.E. shallow and weak gene pool) as all muslims know; they just don't want to admit it. C.A.I.R. to comment?
Ebo, so what? You are comparing appples to oranges with your little whine. Save that for your call to your favorite talk show.
This doesn't surprice me at all. With todays armed nannyism, social welfare backed by the military, as foreign policy, this should keep our military busy for decades; fighting to shove civilization down the throats of allah-bots.Which is hilarious considering that many jerkovs on the right whined about how bad it is to use the miitary for anything but killing the enemy. But now, it seems the military is there to build a life for savages who prolly hate us anyways.
Before we start with the usual comments, let's remember that just about the same fraction of pregnancies in the U.S. end in abortion. These children-to-be never get to see any birthday at all, much less their 4th one.
Posted by: ebonystone
That's not the issue here. And tell me you give a rat's ass about the one in five who die in Afghanistan. As far as I'm concerned, that's one in five fewer little jihadis.
Tell me again why we are in Afghanistan, anyway.
Wsan't that the old saw from the 80's; that after we helped them defeat the USSR we did nothing. Now we are doing tons for them, as well as holding up some lukewarm Islamic government of Karzai, for almost SEVEN years. Yet the country is still in the middle ages politically too. When are we going to be done with these primitives? When is Bush going to actually talk tough to Islamics in general, and tell them the truths they don't want to hear. Could you imagine what a boost for human rights if Bush laid into Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the Sudan etc and told them that shariah law and religious violence is tyranny.
jdamn,
Saudi root? You mean Islamic root, the jimson weed of the world