Updates

In the world's poorest countries, mothers risk their lives giving birth. And women and girls bear the greatest burden when it comes to all issues that contribute to poverty and poor health. Every year, an estimated 358,000 women die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth and 8.1 million children die before their fifth birthday.

Can blogging the stories of women and the challenges they face in the developing world turn empathy to action here? Three organizations, ONE, Women Deliver, and Vestergaard Frandsen set out to prove that social media can be a powerful tool to educate, inform, inspire, and make real change on issues like HIV/AIDS, maternal health, child health, clean water, environmental sustainability, and more. Read more...

By: Toyin Ajao, winner of Women Bloggers Deliver Contest

When I put myself in their shoes, I imagine one of the most difficult feelings experienced by any one of the 200,000 Nigerian pregnant women living with HIV is knowing that the deadly virus could be transmitted to their child without the right care. Read more...

originally posted at Conversations for a Better World

This week, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have promised to spend $1.5 billion on family planning, nutrition and general health of women and children in developing countries over the next five years.  But they didn't say exactly /how/ they will invest the money. This is where your ideas come into the picture!  more...

Source: RH Reality Check

By Carmen Barroso, International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR)

When we speak about universal access to contraceptives and the huge unmet need for family planning services that exists in the world today, the image that usually comes to mind is that of poor women in Africa. Indeed, in most countries, poor women have a much higher rate of unmet need than do women with higher incomes, and in Africa, unmet need for contraception is much higher than in other regions. More than 60 percent of women of reproductive age have an unmet need for contraception in Africa. more...

Through distance learning with U.S. volunteers, Afghan women are learning writing skills and filling a blog with their thoughts about love, politics and family, according to an article in Womens eNews:

In more than 100 entries about love, politics and a variety of other topics, Roya, Seeta and a small group of other Afghan women are able to express themselves freely, something women like them cannot always do.

This week, Akimbo, the blog for the International Women's Health Coalition, published a 3-part series on the importance of investing in women taken from a speech given at the 20th World Population Day in Abuja, Nigeria.

Today, supermodel, actress, and mother Liya Kebede posted to the Huffington Post about, "We Need a Global Fund for Moms."

Earlier this month, Sia Nyama Koroma, First Lady of the Republic of Sierra Leone, wrote an article on Huffington Post titled, "It's Time to Make Mothers a Priority."

Our very own Jill Sheffield has posted on Conversations for a Better World as a "conversation starter." In her blog post, she writes:

When President Barack Obama lifted the Global Gag Rule, reproductive health professionals around the world rejoiced. Check out some of the feedback.

On January 12, Roy M. Pitkin, Professor Emeritus in the UCLA School of Medicine and author of the new book Gods Love: A Modern Medical Perspective on Illnesses that Caused the Early Death of Famous People wrote about the reduction of maternal mortality as the greatest success of the 20th century.

Today, October 15, is Blog Action Day. And here at Women Deliver, we're excited to get involved and be a part of this amazing movement. Today, thousands of bloggers will unite to discuss a single issue - poverty. The aim is to raise awareness and initiate action! And poverty is something that is at the core of maternal and newborn mortality.