Safe Staffing

Figure. Striking nurses from Bantry General Hospital in Bantry, County Cork, Ireland, picket the hospital for a third day after the government refused to engage with the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation over pay, staff recruitment, and retention issues. Photo by Andy Gibson / Alamy Live News.

* Nurses and other health care workers in Northern Ireland have been striking over working conditions and pay. The protesters are calling for the introduction of measures to ensure safe staffing levels and help deliver parity of pay with nurses elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

Women's Reproductive Health

* The World Health Organization (WHO) has released new guidelines for health care providers who work with pregnant or breastfeeding women with suspected or confirmed Ebola virus disease. Among other recommendations, the guidelines stress that these women should immediately stop breastfeeding and be prioritized for diagnostic testing. The guidelines strongly recommend that breastfeeding only restart after two consecutive negative tests of breast milk, separated by 24 hours: http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/ebola-pregnant-and-breastfeed.

* On February 6, to coincide with the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), the United Nations revealed that the cost of treating the total health impacts of FGM would amount to $1.4 billion globally per year. It is estimated that more than 200 million women and girls today have undergone FGM, though according to Christina Pallitto, a scientist at the WHO, many countries and communities are showing that it's possible to end the practice: https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/02/1056802.