June 7th, 2010
Originally posted on Seattle Times
Calling on world health leaders to do more to prevent deaths of mothers and their newborn babies, Melinda Gates said today the Gates Foundation is pledging $1.5 billion over the next five years for family planning, maternal and child health and nutrition in developing countries.
It's the second largest donation in the foundation's history, after a $10 billion pledge over 10 years for vaccine development and delivery made in January.
June 7th, 2010
By Joanne Omang
WASHINGTON, June 7—It was the personal stories that resonated most.
The Women Deliver 2010 conference opened today with certified heavy hitters sending the right messages out to the world about women’s health needs: “If we act now, and act together, we can deliver for women,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about his global agencies. “You can count on us.”
Good to hear, yes. But the 3,000 attendees really caught their collective breath when Ban recalled his own birth in a home in rural Korea, and about wondering as a child why pregnant women would gaze at their shoes before going into the delivery room. It’s because they are wondering if they will ever step into those shoes again, his mother told him.
Motherhood then was a life-threatening experience, and it still is in too much of the world today, Ban said. So began his life’s work, “a journey to help every woman step back into her shoes again after giving birth." more...
June 7th, 2010
By: Tamar Abrams, originally posted on The Huffington Post
In a cavernous convention center in the heart of the Nation's Capitol, thousands of people have gathered to celebrate the role of women in the well-being of families, communities and nations. They are also gathered to push for improvements in maternal and newborn health. Women in native dress from all over the world stride purposefully through the spacious hallways -- midwives, doctors, advocates, lawyers, mothers and grandmothers, Parliamentarians, elected officials, Hollywood stars, and wide-eyed young people. It is a colorful tapestry of ethnic, age, and geographic diversity. more...
June 6th, 2010
Large numbers of the public remain unaware of the health issues facing women and children. Women and girls make up 60% of the world’s poorest and two-thirds of the world’s illiterate. Yet with education and empowerment, they can lead healthy lives and lift themselves and their families out of poverty. To devise a plan to make women and children’s health more visible, we must listen harder to voices from those countries where most maternal and child death take place. Too often we ignore these voices. A themed issue of The Lancet covers a range of global issues on maternal, child, and newborn health.
June 6th, 2010
H.R.H. Crown Princess Mary of Denmark has become Patron of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, to support the agency's work to promote maternal health and safer motherhood in more than 150 developing nations. This work is a UNFPA key priority because women have about 1 in 7 lifetime risk of maternal death in a few developing countries; compared to 1 in 17,800 in Denmark, according to the latest published United Nations estimates. more...
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Check out these global health blogs for more information:
- Maternal Health Task Force
- Akimbo
- Maternova
- Conversations for a Better World
- Sarah Boseley's Global Health Blog
- RH Reality Check
- ONE Blog
- Oxfam International Blogs
- PAI Blog
- IntraHealth Blog
- Global Health Magazine Blog
- White Ribbon Alliance
- The FCI Blog
- Blog 4 Global Health