Sydney, April 25: The Australian government has announced additional financial aid to a project working for women and girls in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
The Commonwealth of Learning's (COL) project "Reaching the Unreached" (RtU) is aimed at providing education and training to 40,000 women and girls who cannot attend school in remote and disadvantaged communities due to early marriage and cultural norms in these countries.
With the additional funds, the project will now reach more women and girls to provide secondary schooling and skills development training through open and distance learning, COL said in a statement on Tuesday.
The announcement was made by the Minister for International Development Concetta Fierravanti-Wells during the Global Citizen Live, an event related to the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London.
In India, the RtU project covers 150 villages in the Satara district of Maharashtra. These communities were selected because of dropout rates arising from migration, poverty and long distances to school.
According to a 2017 Baseline-Endline Report, 25,284 women and girls in these communities throughout India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, completed life skills and vocational skills training, with 4,724 successfully moving into income-generating activities.
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
