AZUA, Dominican Republic —  It was a busy Saturday morning at Marcia González’s church. A bishop was visiting, and normally she would have been there helping with logistics, but on this day she was teaching sex education at a local school.

“I coordinate activities at the church and my husband is a deacon,” González said. “The bishop comes once a year and children are being confirmed, but I am here because this is important for my community.”

For 40 years, González and her husband have pushed for broader sex education in the Dominican Republic, one of four Latin American nations that criminalizes abortion without exceptions. Women face up to two years in prison for having an abortion; penalties for doctors or midwives range from five to 20 years.

With a Bible on its flag, the Caribbean country has a powerful lobby of Catholics and evangelicals who are united against decriminalizing abortion.

President Luis Abinader committed to the decriminalization of abortion as a candidate in 2020, but his government hasn’t acted on that pledge. For now, it depends on whether he is reelected in May.

To help girls prevent unplanned pregnancies in this context, González and other activists have developed “teenage clubs,” where adolescents learn about sexual and reproductive rights, self-esteem, gender violence, finances and other topics. The goal is to empower future generations of Dominican women.

Outside the clubs, sex education is often insufficient, according to activists. Close to 30% of adolescents don’t have access to contraception. High poverty levels increase the risks of facing an unwanted pregnancy.

For the teenagers she mentors, González’s concerns also go beyond the impossibility of terminating a pregnancy.

According to activists, poverty forces some Dominican mothers to marry their 14 or 15-year-old daughters to men up to 50 years older. Nearly 7 out of 10 women suffer from gender violence such as incest, and families often remain silent regarding sexual abuse.

For every 1,000 adolescents between 15 and 19, 42 became mothers in 2023, according to the United Nations Population Fund. And until 2019, when UNICEF published its latest report on child marriage, more than a third of Dominican women married or entered a free union before turning 18.

Dominican laws have prohibited child marriage since 2021, but community leaders say that such unions are still common because the practice has been normalized and few people are aware of the statute.

“In my 14-year-old granddaughter’s class, two of her younger friends are already married,” González said. “Many mothers give the responsibility of their younger children to their older daughters so, instead of taking care of little boys, they run away with a husband.”

Activists hope education can help prevent girls from facing this situation.

“There are myths that people tell you when you have your period,” said Gabriela Díaz, 16, during a recent encounter organized by the Women’s Equality Center. “They say that we are dirty or we have dirty blood, but that is false. We are helping our body to clean itself and improve its functions.”

Díaz calls González “godmother,” a term applied by Plan International to community leaders who implement the programs of this UK-based organization, which promotes children’s rights.

According to its own data, San Cristóbal and Azua, where González lives, are the Dominican cities with the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and child marriage.

To address this, its clubs accept girls between 13 and 17. Each group meets two hours per week, welcomes up to 25 participants and is led by volunteers like González.

In San Cristobal, also in southern Dominican Republic, the National Confederation of Rural Women (CONAMUCA) sponsors teenage clubs of its own.

“CONAMUCA was born to fight for land ownership, but the landscape has changed, and we have integrated new issues, such as food sovereignty, agrarian reform, and sexual and reproductive rights,” said Lidia Ferrer, one of its leaders.

Its clubs gather 1,600 girls in 60 communities, Ferrer said. The topics they study vary from region to region, but among the recurring ones are adolescent pregnancy, early unions and feminicide.

“The starting point is our own reality,” said Kathy Cabrera, who joined CONAMUCA clubs at age 9 and two decades later takes new generations under her wing. “It’s how we live and suffer.”

Migration is increasingly noticeable in rural areas, Cabrera said. Women are forced to walk for miles to attend school or find water, and health services fail in guaranteeing their sexual and reproductive rights.

“We have a government that tells you ‘Don’t have an abortion’ but does not provide the necessary contraception to avoid it.”

She has witnessed how 13-year-old girls bear the children of 65-year-old men while neither families nor authorities seem to be concerned. On other occasions, she said, parents “give away” their daughters because they cannot support them or because they discover that they are no longer virgins.

“It’s not regarded as sexual abuse because, if my grandmother got pregnant and married at an early age, and my great-grandmother too and my mother too, then it means I should too,” Cabrera said.

In southern Dominican communities, most girls can relate to this, or know someone who does.

“My sister got pregnant at 16, and that was very disturbing,” said 14-year-old Laura Pérez. “She got together with a person much older than her, and they have a baby. I don’t think that was right.”

The clubs’ dynamics change as needed to create safe and loving environments for girls to share what they feel. Some sessions kick off with relaxation exercises and others with games.

Some girls speak proudly of what they have learned. One of them mentioned she confronted her father when he said she shouldn’t cut any lemons from a tree while menstruating. Another said that her friends always go to the bathroom in groups, to avoid safety risks. They all regard their godmothers as mentors who have their backs.

“They call me to confide everything,” González said. “I am happy because, in my group, no girl has become pregnant.”

Many girls from teenage clubs have dreams they want to follow. Francesca Montero, 16, would like to become a pediatrician. Perla Infante, 15, a psychologist. Lomelí Arias, 18, a nurse.

“I want to be a soldier!” shouted Laura Pérez, the 14-year-old who wants to be careful not to following her sister’s footsteps.

“I was undecided, but when I entered CONAMUCA I knew I wanted to become a soldier. In here we see all these women who give you strength, who are like you, but as a guide,” Pérez said. “It’s like a child seeing an older person and thinking: ‘When I grow up, I want to be like that.'”
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los angeles — Data gathered by NASA’s Perseverance rover have confirmed the existence of ancient lake sediments deposited by water that once filled a giant basin on Mars called Jezero Crater, according to a study published Friday.

The findings from ground-penetrating radar observations conducted by the robotic rover substantiate previous orbital imagery and other data leading scientists to theorize that portions of Mars were once covered in water and may have harbored microbial life.

The research, led by teams from the University of California at Los Angeles  and the University of Oslo, was published in the journal Science Advances.

It was based on subsurface scans taken by the car-sized, six-wheeled rover as it made its way across the Martian surface from the crater floor onto an adjacent expanse of braided, sedimentary-like features resembling, from orbit, the river deltas found on Earth.

Soundings from the rover’s RIMFAX radar instrument allow scientists to peer underground to get a cross-sectional view of rock layers 65 feet (20 meters) deep, “almost like looking at a road cut,” said UCLA planetary scientist David Paige, the first author of the paper.

Those layers provide unmistakable evidence that soil sediments carried by water were deposited at Jezero Crater and its delta from a river that fed it, just as they are in lakes on Earth. The findings reinforced what previous studies have long suggested — that cold, arid, lifeless Mars was once warm, wet and perhaps habitable.

Scientists look forward to an up-close examination of Jezero’s sediments — thought to have formed some 3 billion years ago — in samples collected by Perseverance for future transport to Earth.

In the meantime, the latest study is welcome validation that scientists undertook their geobiological Mars endeavor at the right place on the planet after all.

Remote analysis of early core samples drilled by Perseverance at four sites close to where it landed in February 2021 surprised researchers by revealing rock that was volcanic in nature, rather than sedimentary as had been expected.

The two studies are not contradictory. Even the volcanic rocks bore signs of alteration through exposure to water, and scientists who published those findings in August 2022 reasoned then that sedimentary deposits may have eroded away.

Indeed, the RIMFAX radar readings reported on Friday found signs of erosion before and after the formation of sedimentary layers identified at the crater’s western edge, evidence of a complex geological history there, Paige said.

“There were volcanic rocks that we landed on,” Paige said. “The real news here is that now we’ve driven onto the delta and now we’re seeing evidence of these lake sediments, which is one of the main reasons we came to this location. So that’s a happy story in that respect.”
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Groundbreaking artificial intelligence-assisted technology can help people with voice disorders speak in their natural voice, giving millions a chance to have clearer conversations. VOA’s Julie Taboh reports. Camera: Tina Trinh
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NAIROBI, Kenya — Researchers say a rhinoceros was impregnated through embryo transfer in the first successful use of a method that they say might later make it possible to save the nearly extinct northern white rhino subspecies. 

The experiment was conducted with the less endangered southern white rhino subspecies. Researchers created an embryo in a lab from an egg and sperm collected from rhinos and transferred it into a southern white rhino surrogate mother at the Ol-Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. 

“The successful embryo transfer and pregnancy are a proof of concept and allow [researchers] to now safely move to the transfer of northern white rhino embryos — a cornerstone in the mission to save the northern white rhino from extinction,” the group said in a statement Wednesday. 

However, the team learned of the pregnancy only after the surrogate mother died of a bacterial infection in November 2023. The rhino was infected when spores from the clostridium strain were released from the soil by floodwater, and the embryo was discovered during a post-mortem examination. 

Still, the scientists were optimistic about their finding, though some conservationists are skeptical that the breakthrough has come in time to save the northern white rhino. 

“Now we have the clear evidence that an embryo that is frozen, thawed, produced in a test tube can produce new life, and that is what we want for the northern white rhino,” said Thomas Hildebrandt, the lead researcher and head of the Department of Reproduction at BioRescue. 

Roughly 20,000 southern white rhinos remain in Africa. That subspecies and an additional species, the black rhino, are bouncing back from significant reduction in their populations because of poaching for their horns. 

However, the northern white rhinoceros subspecies has only two known members left in the world. 

Najin, a 34-year-old, and her 23-year-old offspring, Fatu, are both incapable of natural reproduction, according to the Ol-Pejeta Conservancy where they live. 

The last male white rhino, Sudan, was 45 when he was euthanized in 2018 because of age-related complications. He was Najin’s sire. 

Scientists stored his semen and that of four other dead rhinos, hoping to use them in in vitro fertilization with eggs harvested from female northern white rhinos to produce embryos that eventually will be carried by southern white rhino surrogate mothers. 

Some conservation groups have argued that it is probably too late to save the northern white rhino with in vitro fertilization, as the species’ natural habitat in Chad, Sudan, Uganda, Congo and Central African Republic has been ravaged by human conflict. 

Skeptics say the efforts should focus on other critically endangered species with a better chance at survival. 

“News of the first successful embryo transfer in a rhino is an exciting step, however it sadly comes too late to re-create a viable population of northern white rhinos,” said Dr. Jo Shaw, chief executive officer of Save the Rhino International. 

Shaw said her group’s focus remains on addressing the two main threats to the five species of rhino around the world — poaching of rhinos for their horns and their loss of habitat to development. 

“Our best hope remains to work with the range of partners involved to give rhinos the space and security they need to thrive naturally,” she said. 

Her group said it continues to encourage natural breeding to boost numbers. It cited the example of the Sumatran rhino, of which there are fewer than 80 left. Last year, two calves were born through natural reproduction, the group said. 
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Windhoek, Namibia — Namibian President Hage Geingob is set to undergo medical treatment in the United States after an exam found the possible return of cancerous cells in his body, according to a news release from his office Wednesday.

Having been diagnosed, treated and cleared of prostate cancer, Geingob was again found to have cancerous cells after undergoing colonoscopy, gastroscopy and biopsy procedures earlier this month.

The CEO of the Cancer Association of Namibia, Rolf Hansen, told VOA the president has been open about his cancer diagnosis in the past. He said early detection and treatment played a big role in Geingob’s past treatment and recovery.

“The scope that was done indicates that there might be cancerous cells in the soft tissue, perhaps the gut, the stomach, something like this,” Hansen said. “But until there is a formal prognosis by a doctor that has been publicly released, it’s all speculation.”

Political analyst James Makuwa said Namibians would like to know more about what the latest diagnosis means.

“What are the reasons and motives of the president’s office sharing a diagnosis which has no prognosis?” Makuwa asked. “They are basically putting the country in a state of panic … because you are telling us the person’s diagnosis, but we have no clue what condition he’s in, how he is doing, what is going to happen to him. We have no clue.”

According to the statement issued by the president’s office, Geingob accepted an offer from scientists and doctors in Los Angeles to undergo a novel therapy for the cancerous cells.

Dr. Elizabeth Kamati lauded Geingob’s openness in a country where men are known not to take their health seriously until too late.

“We applaud the president for being very open to us,” she said. “He can encourage other men who are also going through the same disease of cancer, which is somehow taboo in our society, to come out and tell them a diagnosis with cancer is not a death sentence.”

The president has come under harsh criticism in the past for seeking medical treatment abroad. However, Namibian doctors acknowledge that cancer treatments are relatively specialized and that the country does not have the equipment and medical expertise to treat the disease effectively.
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Montreal — A 10-year global study of positive doping tests by children and young teenagers showed most were tied to Russia, India and China, and in sports like weightlifting, athletics and cycling, the World Anti-Doping Agency said Wednesday.

Diuretics, stimulants and anabolic steroids were the most commonly found substances in more than 1,500 positive tests involving more than 1,400 minors since 2012.

The youngest athlete tested was 8 years old, and the youngest sanctioned in a doping case was a 12-year-old, WADA said in the Operation Refuge study.

“Operation Refuge reports in heartbreaking detail the deep trauma and isolation child athletes experience following a positive test and a doping sanction,” the chair of WADA’s athlete council, Ryan Pini, said in a statement.

It cited the testimony of a female minor “who recalled the extreme pressure she and other female athletes felt from the male coaches to keep their weight down,” the report said. “This pressure included an impossible expectation to slow down the effects of puberty, because puberty would supposedly negatively impact their ability to compete.”

WADA said its intelligence and investigations unit analyzed testing data of samples collected from minors since 2012. The investigators also received 58 alerts since 2018 on a confidential hotline that implicated minors in doping.

“Analysis of those disclosures revealed that the majority had originated from Russia and India, and that the most reported sports, globally, were aquatics and athletics,” the agency said.

In cases that reached a sanction, the most commonly found doping substance was the diuretic furosemide in Russia, the anabolic steroid stanozolol in India and clenbuterol in China, the report said.

In weightlifting cases, the most common substance was stanozolol. In track and field, it was the endurance boosting hormone EPO. And in cycling, it was meldonium, WADA said. Meldonium is the heart medication most widely known for the doping case of Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova.

WADA said about 80% of positive tests led to sanctions and others were for substances allowed for therapeutic use. Those included a stimulant for treating ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).

Some evidence suggested systematic doping, including multiple minors testing positive for the same substance in samples taken on the same day.

WADA highlighted a 2012 case of four boxers in Romania testing positive for furosemide; three track and field athletes in China testing positive for stanozolol in 2021; two Belarusian skaters testing positive for furosemide in 2022; and two Kazakh weightlifters testing positive for ostarine last year.

“Operation Refuge places a difficult but important issue into the spotlight,” said WADA director of intelligence and investigations Günter Younger. “We are working towards ensuring that the experiences of those interviewed during this operation do not continue to repeat themselves.”
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Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwean health authorities — battling a cholera outbreak that has infected about 20,000 people and killed more than 370 — say they hope donated vaccines will ease the spread of waterborne disease now affecting 60 of the country’s 64 districts.  

Zimbabwean Health Minister Douglas Mombeshora told reporters in Harare on Wednesday that the country had recorded 20,121 suspected cholera cases and 376 deaths — six of them since Tuesday. He said the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund had secured 2.3 million cholera vaccine doses for the country, with nearly 900,000 of them to be administered next week.

“The vaccination campaign is expected to start from the 29th of January in [a] phased approach to the hot spots,” he said. “This is because the doses are not enough to cover the whole country. And then roll on to the other affected districts as we receive more vaccines. The challenge is that there is a shortage of vaccine in the world because cholera is not in Zimbabwe alone. So, all other countries that have reported cholera are also getting the same vaccine from the same source. So, it’s now controlled by the WHO. Otherwise only the rich countries will wipe out the vaccines before others get them.”    

Mombeshora said 37 African countries had confirmed cases of cholera. The WHO’s Africa office did not confirm the number Wednesday.

In a statement to VOA, Dr. Paul Ngwakum, regional health adviser for UNICEF in eastern and southern Africa, said the cholera outbreak “remains a serious public health concern and continues to impact children’s lives in the region. An unprecedented surge in cholera cases is being recorded in the region due to many factors, including extreme climatic events such as droughts, cyclones and flooding … With porous borders and high population movements, cholera is spreading fast.”

Mombeshora is urging Zimbabweans to accept the cholera vaccine.

“This is not a new vaccine and it has been used all over the world,” he said. “The only reason why we do not have it enough is because it is only manufactured on demand. Therefore, it’s the same vaccine and it’s very, very safe. We did not receive an adverse report in our past use of it. I have had a cholera vaccine before, years ago, nothing to worry about.”  

Dr. Prosper Chonzi, Harare’s director of health services, says now that there is vaccine, people must not ease up on hygienic practices. Chonzi said he was not happy that Harare is still full of vendors selling uninspected fruits and vegetables.

“I think the general economy is playing against us,” he said. “We have been doing these hide-and-seek games, chase after vendors, it has not been working. At least if we clean up for now, then we come up with medium- to long-term plans to maintain the clean environment that is there. As the director of health, I am not happy with the vending situation in the city. It is playing against what we want to achieve as we try to contain the outbreak. If you buy food from uninspected premises, the chances of you contracting not only cholera, but typhoid, dysentery and other diarrhea, are very high.”

Zimbabwe’s moribund economy is forcing citizens to venture into vending as a source of income as jobs are hard to come by, with some estimates putting unemployment at about 85%. Experts say that is making the fight against a cholera outbreak difficult with the country recording 1,000 new cases every week since the beginning of the year, according to the United Nations.
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