Updates

Watch Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, as she addresses and opens the Women Deliver 2010 conference and calls for greater attention and action for maternal health, reproductive health, and women's health around the world. "Women deliver for the world," she says. "Now the world needs to deliver for women."

By Jane Dreaper, Originally posted at BBC News
Health correspondent, BBC News, at the Women Deliver conference in Washington DC

Campaigners have pledged to keep up pressure on finance ministers to fund efforts to stop women dying in pregnancy and childbirth.

Women Deliver president, Jill Sheffield, told meeting delegates that the economic arguments were "dramatic". It comes after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a boost in funds for women and child health. World leaders agreed 10 years ago that maternal deaths should be reduced by 75% by 2015. Progress on this - the fifth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) - has until recently been slow - but activists say there is now a sense of momentum. Around 350,000 women around the world die each year from preventable problems such as infections or blood clots. Often, they have not had access to basic care during or after their pregnancy.

We, ministers representing governments participating in the Ministers Forum at Women Deliver 2010, acknowledge our collective responsibility to improve the health of girls and women especially in developing countries and confirm girls and women’s health as a human right.  We express satisfaction at the progress that has been made so far to improve maternal and newborn health.

However, we are seized by the urgency of the need to overcome once and for all the shortcomings in development policy and programs, particularly the challenges for scaling up the investments in the health, dignity and rights of girls and women in order to achieve sustainable development. Read more...