Updates

By: Jill Sheffield with Maz Kessler; Originally posted on Huffington Post

When I was 27 years old, I met a young mother who became one of my greatest inspirations and left a lasting impression on my life.

I was an idealistic young volunteer at a family planning clinic in Nairobi, Kenya. One morning, a woman my own age walked in asking for contraceptives. She carried a newborn baby on her front, and another, older baby on her back. She told me that she had already been pregnant 11 times, but only had six living children.

I was immediately struck by the fact that although we were the same age, I had so many choices that she did not. Back then, Kenya, like so many other countries, required a woman to have her husband's signature in order to access contraceptives. Read more...

Looking for an opportunity to become more involved in women's health? Keep reading to find out 10 ways you can make a difference this summer.

By: Frances Kissling, a member of the Women Deliver Conference team and is a visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, U.S., orginally posted at Impact, the magazine for PSI

Richard Horton,the editor of the The Lancet, called the 2010 Women Deliver conference “the most significant event for the future of women and children in 20 years.” What, might we ask, would lead Horton, a man not known for extravagant praise, to make such a claim for a conference? Even if it were one that brought together 3,200 experts and advocates including UN agency heads and the Secretary-General, ministers of health, parliamentarians, health workers, young professionals, and women’s and human rights advocates to talk about maternal mortality and raise public awareness about the need for more funding and better strategies to end maternal death and injury? Has not the world heard over and over again that more money is needed for every development and humanitarian cause in the world to the point of donor fatigue?

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of the second Women Deliver global conference. To put world leaders on notice that the time for action on maternal health is now, 3,400 advocates, policymakers, development leaders, health care professionals, youth, advocates, and media from 146 countries converged on Washington, DC on June 7-9 at Women Deliver 2010. More than 800 speeches and presentations were given at the six plenaries and 120 breakout sessions. The heads of five UN agencies, plus the Secretary-General of the United Nations, attended. Thirty countries, UN agencies, the World Bank, corporations, and foundations helped support Women Deliver. Please click through for highlights and recaps of the conference.

By: Kate Dilley, Administrative Coordinator at Management Sciences for Health, originally posted at haba na haba, hujaza kibaba

One of the most striking admissions I heard during the Women Deliver 2010 conference in Washington DC (June 7-9) was that the major challenge facing maternal health improvement is a lack of political will. Kathleen Sebelius, the US Secretary for Health and Human Services, suggested that the problem with improving maternal mortality lay not with the lack of knowledge or interventions, but the political will to put that knowledge to action, the will to make maternal mortality a priority of governments, the will to stand up and say that the lives of women matter, and we MUST do something about it. Read more...

By: Robert Mukondiwa, a journalist and human rights advocate from Zimbabwe and one of the Women Deliver 100 Young Leaders

A time bomb is always something that is said to be ticking and with the ability to have disastrous consequences should it explode. For once I encountered a time-bomb I would have every pleasure in seeing explode.

The Women Deliver conference held in Washington, DC last week with a hope of delivering solutions for women and girls was preceded by a youth symposium that sent an amazing message out and gave me a personal reflective realization... I got a taste of the reality that under the seams of a seemingly quiet world with little going on, there is actually an unheralded youth movement that is about to explode... a ticking time-bomb of extraordinary leadership ready to be unleashed on the world.

By: Dr. Morsi Mansour, Principal Program Associate on the Leadership, Management and Sustainability Program at Management Sciences for Health

Last week at the Women Deliver Conference in Washington, DC, Melinda Gates announced that the Gates Foundation  is committing $1.5 Billion in new grant money for maternal health. “Women and children have moved up on the global agenda, and I’m here to tell you that’s where they are going to stay,” said Gates.

In most developing countries, women and girls are the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the population because of entrenched inequalities. MSH believes that health is a human right; equal access is essential to all aspects of health care. Leadership and management is a key ingredient for improving maternal health – it’s the human element of a health system. Leadership and management is often a missed ingredient. But, effective, simple interventions can save a lot of lives.

By: Siddhartha Yadav, one of Women Deliver's 100 Young Leaders, originally posted at BMJ (British Medical Journal) Group Blog

Last week, more than 3,000 global leaders working in the field of maternal and reproductive health gathered in Washington, D.C for the Women Deliver 2010 conference. With the theme of delivering solutions for girls and women, the conference focused on sharing solutions that can help us achieve the millennium development goals on maternal and reproductive health.

Young people were one of the focuses of the conference.  One hundred young leaders were selected to attend a special youth pre-conference. I was one of them. After interacting with my fellow young leaders, I am amazed by the amount of the work many of them have been doing and its impact in making the lives of girls and women in their communities better. 

Most of the young leaders on reproductive health that I met were not from a medical background. This was a bit of a surprise for me. There were maths students, human rights activists, engineers, managers who have been doing immense work to improve the health of women. This made me wonder if we, young doctors and medical students, are lagging behind in advocacy despite our distinct relationship to health and wellbeing.  Are we too clinically oriented?

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...

By: Karl Hofmann, CEO and President of PSI, originally posted on The Huffington Post

In April, the Lancet released some encouraging statistics on maternal health: maternal deaths dropped from about 526,000 in 1980 to around 340,000 maternal deaths worldwide in 2008. This is a decline worth celebrating, but not a reason to pull back; if anything, this study should drive us to do more: to advocate for necessary policy changes and to push for funding increases for maternal health. We know progress is possible.

More than 3,200 people - everyone from world leaders to midwives working in rural Africa - will convene in Washington, D.C., today to attend the Women Deliver Conference 2010. We are meeting to map out this progress.  more...