Updates

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...

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

Melinda recently returned from a three-day trip to Bangladesh. She, along with Nick Kristof, agreed to answer readers’ questions about development issues focusing on that part of the world. Here is the first installment of the Q&A session reposted from Kristof's New York Times blog "On the Ground." Read more...

This year has been one of forward momentum, innovative solutions and inspiring individuals. As 2011 comes to a close, it’s time to celebrate achievements and look at some of the most memorable milestones and events of the past year. Moving into 2012, we are armed with the knowledge of what success looks like. We must continue to work to ensure that girls and women are at the heart of development efforts, now and in the years to come. Read more...

Earlier this week, Bayer Health Care broadened its commitment to reproductive health supplies for women by reducing the price of its five-year contraceptive implant product, Jadelle©. The price will decrease from $21 to $19.50 per implant, and could further reduce with future large orders.

Bayer projects that with these cost savings, over half a million women who view Jadelle© as their contraceptive method of choice will now be able to access it. Potential outcomes are powerful and plentiful, including the prevention of more than 550,000 unwanted pregnancies, 255,000 abortions, 1,000 maternal deaths, and 6,000 newborn deaths. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Strategic Partnerships Associate at Women Deliver

Yesterday, in Washington, DC, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Maternal Health Task Force, UNFPA, USAID Bureau for Global Health, and the African Population and Health Research Center co-hosted the last session of the two year maternal health dialogue series. The partners launched the report, “Delivering Solutions: Advancing Dialogue to Improve Maternal Health,” which captures the strategies and recommendations that emerged from the series.

Since December 2009, this maternal health dialogue series has hosted 28 sessions with over 100 panelists engaging in conversation and debate around some of the most pressing maternal health topics.   A total of over one thousand participants attended sessions on topics ranging from HIV/AIDS and maternal health service integration to family planning in fragile states; new applications of existing communications technologies; and addressing maternal health in urban slums. The series focused on major challenges and opportunities for moving the maternal health agenda forward, and affirmed that solutions for saving the lives of women and girls are plentiful and powerful. Read more...

Our colleagues at PATH are spearheading an in-depth analysis of maternal health supplies to better understand the barriers, challenges, and needs of women and health providers around the world. If you haven’t participated already, please share your experience and thoughts in the mapping survey, which PATH describes as follows:

PATH recognizes the challenges to the delivery of quality MH services and reduction in maternal mortality and morbidity are myriad and complex. The intent of this landscaping is to inform recent efforts by the broader maternal and reproductive health communities to advance maternal health supplies advocacy by building upon the lessons learned and structures created by the reproductive health supplies movement. Their specific focus on overcoming the financial, logistical, and policy-related barriers to ensuring contraceptive supplies has helped to mobilize global support for and increase access to family planning overall. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Strategic Partnerships Associate at Women Deliver

In November 2010, GBCHealth (formerly the Global Business Coalition) launched a cross-sectoral initiative, Healthy Women, Healthy Economies (HHWE), to highlight the importance of investing in the health of girls and women in order to promote economic sustainability and growth. Each HHWE corporation works to strengthen their programs while also collaborating with other partners to learn ways in which they can invest better in girls and women through the development of best practices and strategic innovations.

The partnership between GBCHealth, the U.S. State Department Office of Global Women’s Issues, and companies including Coca Cola and Chevron (among many others) guides corporate investment to areas where companies can have the most impact: improving health systems, bolstering the health of the female workforce, and supporting girls’ education. Read more...

By: Jill Sheffield, President of Women Deliver

This week, I was privileged to join more than 2,200 participants at the International Conference on Family Planning in Dakar, Senegal. It was truly an amazing conference with three days of rich discussion and wonderful commitments, like those made by Dfid and the government of Senegal.
 
As the focus of this conference was on family planning, it was essential that participants not only discuss the social benefits of investing in family planning – which include a reduction of unintended pregnancies, a decrease in maternal deaths, and a decline of unsafe abortions – but also the incredible economic impact of investing in family planning. Read more...

By: Joanna Hoffman, Special Projects Manager at Women Deliver

Today’s commemoration of World AIDS Day marks 30 years since the HIV/AIDS epidemic began, claiming nearly 30 million deaths around the world in the decades since. Progress towards averting deaths, through global partnerships and committed donors, has been heartening: close to 50% of those eligible for antiretroviral therapy now have access to lifesaving treatment, and new HIV infections have decreased by 21% since 1997. Overall, treatment has saved the lives of nearly 2.5 million people since 1995, bringing the world closer than ever before to UNAIDS’ goal of “getting to zero”- zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. Read more...

By: Victoria Hale, PhD, CEO at Medicines360

Most people have one life changing, “ah-ha” moment in their lives, but in my case, I had two. The first moment came when I was sitting in the back of a New York City taxi, and the driver asked me what I did for a living. When I told him that I was a pharmaceutical scientist, he said, “Oh, you have all the money!” And, in that moment, my first company, OneWorld Health, was born.

OneWorld Health is a first-generation non-profit pharmaceutical company created as an innovative, gutsy initiative to develop drugs to treat people with neglected tropical diseases. This charity model is entirely dependent on others—that is, on large grants from philanthropists and on the for-profit pharmaceutical industry for the delivery of medicines to the poor. Read more...