Updates

Yesterday, the world’s largest malaria conference, The 5^th Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Pan-African Conference, opened with a call for substantial and sustained support for research to guide evidence-based policies and the development of new malaria tools, which together could save countless lives. Watch this interview video with Dr. Rose Leke, University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon, where she discusses the dangers of malaria during pregnancy — and how to prevent it.

Water use has grown at more than twice the rate of the world’s population over the past century, mostly for agricultural purposes, according to the 2009 United Nations Millennium Development Goals Report. This has left 884 million people at risk for–or already facing–a water shortage. And though we rarely think of the connection between maternal health and water, it’s one of the most important elements for women’s health. When women don’t have clean latrines and hand-washing stations, they often have poor hygiene practices that can lead to the spread of waterborne illnesses such as cholera, diarrhea, hepatitis and typhoid fever.

This weekend, the Christian Science Monitor published an article called, “Amid war Afghanistan trains thousands of new midwives.” The article says:

Pashtoon Azfar, head of the Afghan Midwives Association, says the number of trained midwives has grown nearly six-fold since rebuilding effort in Afghanistan began. “In 2002, we had 467 midwives, but no one knew how qualified they were; for years, they had received no access to training,” says Ms. Azfar, also a midwifery specialist with the international nonprofit health organization Jhpiego, whose maternal health programs are funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Today, there are more than 2,400 midwives around the country who have been trained in a standardized and accredited two-year program, she says.

At a high-level UN meeting in Istanbul, participants discussed how maternal mortality rates have been cut in half in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. However, according to a UNFPA progress report, many women in vulnerable groups remain at risk. In response, decision-makers and government officials from 20 countries attending the UNFPA meeting in Istanbul pledged to step up the fight against needless deaths and suffering resulting from pregnancy and childbirth.

The Maternal Health Task Force has been working with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Global Health Initiative and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to create a series of events on Advancing Policy Dialogue on Maternal Health.  The first event will occur next month on December 3 from 12PM to 2PM in Washington D.C. at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The topic is the integration of HIV/AIDS and maternal health services. We encourage you to attend. If you are unable to attend the event in person, a live webcast will be broadcasted (and archived for later viewing) at www.wilsoncenter.org.

Recent research indicates that between 25 per cent to 40 per cent of maternal deaths could be avoided by ensuring access to family planning. This data was cited in the 2009 Report of the UN Secretary-General to the Commission on Population and Development, World Population Monitoring, E/CN.9/2009/3, on page 20, citation 35, which is an article by Oona M.R. Campbell and Wendy J. Graham, “Strategies for reducing maternal mortality: getting on with what works”, that appeared in The Lancet, vol. 368, 2006.

Despite progress, health system shortfalls and gender discrimination are severely impacting women’s health worldwide, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda.

It’s time, right? Gender-based violence (GBV) can pervade a woman’s entire life cycle, beginning with selective abortion of a female fetus to female genital mutilation/cutting to intimate partner violence. GBV is usually perpetrated by men against women and girls, and it can take many forms – sexual abuse, physical violence, emotional or psychological abuse, verbal abuse, economic abuse or beatings during pregnancy. GBV jeopardizes a woman’s health and well-being and detracts from her reproductive health.

Cell phones have cut dramatically the number of women dying during childbirth in Amensie village in south-central Ghana, according to an article posted on AlertNet.

Today, December 10, is Human Rights Day. As we at Women Deliver have been saying all year, MATERNAL HEALTH IS A HUMAN RIGHT. And as we said in our blog for Conversations for a Better World:

The Maternal Health Task Force has asked us to distribute a request for letters of intent to submit funding proposals that will focus on indigenous developing country initiatives. Through this request, they are seeking innovative ideas from non-profit NGOs based in developing countries working to improve maternal health in their communities.

Change.org just launched the 2010 Ideas for Change in America competition and the White Ribbon Alliance has submitted a call to the US government to make maternal and newborn health a priority by investing in women. Their idea is titled: Invest in a More Stable World, Invest in Women.

The PBS newsmagazine show NOW on PBS highlighted maternal mortality in Haiti on Friday night with an interview from Ann Starrs, president of Family Care International. While Haiti's catastrophic earthquake has left lives and institutions in ruin, it has also exacerbated a longtime lethal risk in Haiti: Dying during childbirth. Challenges in transportation, education, and quality health care contribute to Haiti having the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere, a national crisis even before the earthquake struck.

Suzanne Ehlers, the Interim President of Population Action International, wrote an op-ed piece for the Huffington Post on the early findings of their joint research with the Maternal Health Task Force on maternal health supplies. Ehlers writes in her post about maternal health research in Bangladesh and Uganda where they're learning...

Today, Sarah Boseley, the health editor of the Guardian, dedicated her Global Health Blog to the issue of maternal health and family planning. In her post, Boseley discusses the difficulty in combatting maternal mortality. But, she references the true "quick win" when it comes to saving women from dying of complications from pregnancy and childbirth: Family Planning. She says...