Updates

By: Christy Turlington, originally posted on The Huffington Post
Christy Turlington previewed her film, NO WOMAN, NO CRY Monday night at the Women Deliver 2010 conferernce

This week, nearly 3,000 people from more than 140 countries are gathering in downtown Washington D.C. as part of the world's largest international meeting of women's health and empowerment champions -- the Women Deliver Conference. At this critical time, these passionate and committed advocates are here to deliver a message that sustainable development around the globe can only be achieved if we prevent maternal deaths.

After the last Women Deliver Conference in 2007, I had my second child, traveled abroad to Peru with CARE as their Advocate for Maternal Health, and set out to make a documentary film about maternal mortality first-hand that hundreds of thousands of women die every year from pregnancy and childbirth complications, making reproductive health problems the leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 15 to 44; yet strikingly, experts estimate that 90% of these are preventable. The impact extends beyond individual lives. In fact each year millions of children are orphaned, and motherless children are twice as likely to die before the age of five. Economies suffer as well, with an estimated $15 billion lost in productivity each year.  more...

source: The Huffington Post

By Helen Clark, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme

As Prime Minister of my country for nine years and the first woman to lead the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), I believe that achieving gender equality is not only morally right, but also catalytic to development as a whole, creating political, economic, and social opportunities for women which benefit individuals, communities, countries, and the world.

This strong belief underpins my contribution at the Women Deliver event in Washington, DC during a discussion on women and power with an impressive panel of powerful women, including the creator of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington; former Chilean Prime Minister Michelle Bachelet; actress Ashley Judd; and Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor and Assistant to Barack Obama for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement.

Women Deliver was launched in 2007, and works globally to focus attention on fulfilling what is called "Millennium Development Goal #5." This goal calls for a reduction in maternal mortality and universal access to reproductive health globally. more...

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...

By Martha Wainwright

Source: The Huffington Post

My story had a happy ending. Thousands more mothers would too if world leaders stick to a promise they made 40 years ago.

Once upon a time, I was working in the UK and seven months pregnant with my first child. After a show one evening, not feeling 100 percent, my husband Brad took me home to the place we were staying at in North London. I had been excited to get my last week of work over with and go home to the U.S. to prepare for our new arrival. But that night everything came crashing down. All plans flew out the window and Brad and I found ourselves in the emergency room at 2 a.m.

I was admitted right away, which scared me of course, and taken to the maternity unit. I was in pain and bleeding, but I felt calm -- believing, naively, that I was going to get out and still have a normal pregnancy. A midwife visited us and then the consultant. Then the pain became sharper, and my water broke. I yelled and the mood in the room went from calm and jovial to scary and serious. Brad took my hand and we realized that we weren't going anywhere.

By Dr. Fred Sai, co-host of Women Deliver 2010 and former advisor to the Ghanaian government on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. You can follow the live stream of the Women Deliver 2010 conference from June 7th to 9th at www.womendeliver.org/webcast.

Originally posted at ONE blog.

This March, the Lancet released new statistics that revealed an unprecedented drop in the number of women who die every year during pregnancy and childbirth. The study found that from 1980 to 2008, maternal deaths globally have fallen from 500,000 each year to 340,000. Having spent some 40 years working on women and children’s health in Ghana and across Africa, I welcomed this progress. But as the world celebrated, I also couldn’t help but wonder, “Where is Africa?”

By: Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, CEO of Vestergaard Frandsen 

Women deliver in so many ways. It is usually a woman who gives so much of herself without hesitation, negating her needs to serve those of others.

She is the mother who patiently sifts through the dust for stray grains of rice to feed her malnourished children. She is the wife who lovingly cares for a husband with tuberculosis. She is the family’s caregiver who walks seven kilometers every day to fetch water from a brown river so her family can drink. And she never complains.  

That same woman suppresses her own dreams of education to do piecemeal work to pay for her children’s school fees. And when her youngest child spikes a fever in the middle of the night, she will barter whatever she can to get a truck driver to carry them to the nearest clinic three villages away. She doesn’t know how she will pay for medication if available, or for the long trip home. But through sheer determination, she’ll find a way.

By Rahim Kanani (Originally posted on The Huffington Post)

French poet Victor Hugo once remarked that "there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." Today, that idea is unmistakable: addressing the political, economic, social, and cultural challenges facing women and girls worldwide. It's no coincidence then that in less than two weeks -- strategically ahead of the G8 Summit to be held in Canada -- the world's leading voices on advancing the lives and livelihoods of women and girls around the world will come together in Washington, D.C., for the 2010 Women Deliver Summit. And if the list of featured speakers, plenary sessions, and concurrent discussions are any indication, this convening promises to be a fire-starter of global action as we enter the second decade of the 21st century.

In addressing the most urgent inequalities and challenges facing women and girls, the two main points of Women Deliver are simple: the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) cannot be achieved without investing in women, and if we act now, we can still achieve MDG-5: reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters and providing universal access to reproductive health by 2015. The convening, however, is one of many moving parts working together to orchestrate a massive global movement to equalize opportunity and access for women and girls internationally.