Updates

By: Nargis Shirazi, Women Deliver 100 Young Leader; Originally posted on the Frontline Health Workers Coalition Blog

It is a cold rainy day, and a pregnant mother’s water has just broken. A young man stares at the pouring rain hitting the muddy path and sighs. He has no way of getting his wife to the health center that is a two hour walk from his mud-thatched house. He has no money, his bicycle tires are worn out, and they both have no idea what to do! She dies as a result of obstructed labor. Read more...

By: Oying Rimon; Originally posted on Impatient Optimist

Around the world, frontline health workers are often the first link to lifesaving care and supplies, and in some cases they are the only link for families and communities in rural and impoverished areas. This is also where most of the world’s unmet need for family planning resides. More than 200 million women in developing countries want to delay or avoid pregnancy but lack access to modern methods of contraception. Read more...

By: Smita Gaith, Women Deliver

Telecom provider Etisalat was recently honored at the GSM (Groupe Spéciale Mobile)Association Awards, for its new maternal health product. The company has received the awards for “Best Mobile Health Innovation” and “mWomen Best Mobile Product” for its innovative service program called “Etisalat Mobile Baby.”

Nearly all maternal mortality cases occur in developing countries, with 1 in 31 deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of these deaths can be prevented by ensuring greater access to information for health workers, more timely arrival at health facilities, and increased ability to recognize problems during pregnancy. Read more...

By: Nadene Brunk, Midwives for Haiti is a winner of the Women Deliver 50

Midwives For Haiti began educating Haitian women, in the skills that save mother's lives, in 2006. We began by teaching under trees, in the laundry room of a hospital, in an outdoor restaurant; wherever we could find room to teach and learn. With no textbooks in Creole, the native language of the majority of women in Haiti, we improvised and created teaching materials with our students. We learned that Haitian women are hungry for knowledge and have seen enough maternal and infant death to know they want to be a part of ending the suffering and grief. Read more...

Hesperian Health Guides has launched a free mobile application for iPhone which covers topics including pre-natal health, danger signs during pregnancy, birth and post-natal care, and 20 how-to items for health workers, such as how to take blood pressure. 

The app is designed to be accessible to those in rural settings. Once downloaded to an iPhone, the information can be accessed with no Internet connection required. Read more...

By: Smita Gaith, Communications and Program Intern

Intel Corporation and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) have recently announced their partnership to increase skills and knowledge of health workers around the world. The joint endeavor is part of Intel’s efforts to maintain and build on its commitment to the United Nations’ Every Woman, Every Child initiative, which is focused on training 1 million community health workers by 2015. Read more...

By: Rati Bishnoi, Special Projects Intern for Women Deliver

In December, Mahila became the first winner of UNFPA’s Delivering Health, Saving Lives award for outstanding Afghan midwives. At the young age of 25, Mahila has delivered hundreds of babies and is now recognized as the best midwife in the northeastern province of Badakhsan.

In 2008, Mahila graduated from the Community Midwives Education Programme after spending two years gaining basic level knowledge and skills related to obstetrics, neonatology, public health, family planning, prenatal care, delivery, and post-pregnancy care. Armed with this technical knowledge, Mahila and other graduates of the Afghan Midwives Association and UNFPA-supported midwifery programme are helping to make Afghanistan a safer place for mothers and their children. Read more...

By: Lindsey Taylor Wood, Communications Associate 

Zubaida Bai’s relationship with postpartum infection is a personal one. As a consequence of unsanitary birthing conditions and practices, she contracted an infection that led to years of suffering. Rather than allow her misfortune to deter her work, the engineer turned social entrepreneur shifted her time and energy toward developing a clean delivery birthing kit that could help prevent the deaths of the nearly 600,000 women and nine million infants that lose their lives to postpartum infection each year. Read more... 

By: Melinda French Gates
Originally posted by: the Impatient Optimists

Melinda Gates and Nick Kristof recently returned from a three-day trip to Bangladesh. To highlight the corresponding development issues, they agreed to answer reader's questions. This is the second installment of their three-part Q&A session.

Q. COSIMA BARLETT: My comments do not in any way detract from the profound admiration I have for you and your Foundation but a simple question: why do you not concentrate more of your efforts on American children who are so lacking in so many important areas as statistics now show? Read more...