Updates

“The biggest enemy of women’s health and rights is political indifference”, Jill Sheffield, President of Women Deliver remarked during the opening plenary session. The Parliamentarians’ Forum on “Delivering Solutions, Delivering Resources, Delivering Leadership: The Role of Parliamentarians in advancing Maternal Health” was dedicated to prevent just that and discussed the way forward to achieve MDG 5 in the remaining five years from a Parliamentarians’ angle.

The Parliamentarians’ Forum culminated in a Parliamentarians’ Statement. Amongst others, Parliamentarians called for additional US $12 billion a year to be invested in women and girls and  to actively work towards the establishment of a global funding mechanism for family planning, mothers and children with other international donors. The statement urges Ministers to establish realistic and verifiable annual action plans for reaching individual MDG targets with a special emphasis on MDG 5 (a and b) to be presented at the UN High Level Meeting on the MDGs and commit to take a leading role in communicating the societal, economic, political and cultural benefits of investing in women and girls to key stakeholders. The full statement is attached.

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.