February 9th, 2012
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...
December 13th, 2011
ABC News continues its year-long global health series by examining the most dangerous thing a woman can do: why so many women are dying during pregnancy and childbirth. Diane Sawyer and a team of correspondents report on a special edition of “20/20,” Friday, Dec.16 on ABC.
New York, NY, December 12, 2011 -- The numbers are staggering: every 90 seconds, a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth – that’s about 1,000 women a day. Yet experts say that more than 80% of these deaths are totally preventable if only the mothers-to-be received proper medical care. At the bottom of the list, countries like Afghanistan, with its child brides, and Sierra Leone, which has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. The US ranks surprisingly low in the industrialized world -- number 41 on the maternal mortality list. It is an issue that experts all over the world say is “unforgiveable” because even the most basic medicine and intervention could prevent the majority of these deaths. Read on...
December 12th, 2011
Last night, maternal health advocate Robin Lim accepted the CNN 2011 Hero of the Year award, telling the audience, “Every mother counts, and health care is a human right.” Lim is the founder of the Yayasan Bumi Sehat health clinics in Indonesia which provide free antenatal, birthing and postnatal care; capacity-building and training for local midwives; and community outreach on maternal health. Read more...
October 31st, 2011
By: Lindsey Taylor Wood, Communications Associate
In Northern Nigeria, 1 in 23 women will die in pregnancy or childbirth. In fact, 10% of maternal deaths, globally, occur there; and rates of newborn and child mortality are also amongst the highest in the world. Read more...
October 17th, 2011
By: Madeline Taskier, Strategic Partnerships Associate at Women Deliver
At only 12 years old, Kavita* stopped attending school to help her family with housework. By 15, she was married to a man from a village in the Ajmer District of Rajasthan, a western state in India. In this new village, she taught young children during the day and attended classes at night to improve her literacy. It was through this local literacy program, Kavita was approached by leaders of The Barefoot College; a new initiative trying to develop a cohort of female solar engineers. Read more...
August 29th, 2011
By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator at Women Deliver
Decades of conflict between the military junta and ethnic minority groups in Burma have internally displaced approximately 440,000 people from their homes and forced them into informal settlements, but a network of community health workers are working to make a difference. The Mobile Obstetrics Maternal Health Workers (MOM) Project provides high-impact and mobile emergency obstetric care, family planning, and essential pre-natal care to women and families in these settlements. Read more...
June 22nd, 2011
By: Joy Marini, Director Corporate Contributions, Johnson & Johnson
At the opening ceremony of the International Confederation of Midwives 29th Triennial Conference in Durban, South Africa on Sunday, a hall full of midwives joined voices to sing "One Love", Bob Marleys anthem of compassion for humankind. As a witness I can report that you have not heard the power of a collective voice until youve heard 3,000 midwives singing about their love and commitment to mothers and babies: Hear the children crying... lets get together and feel all right. Read more...
June 20th, 2011
Nearly 3.6 million lives could be saved in 58 developing countries around the world with scaled-up midwifery services, according to a report launched today by UNFPA and partners called The State of the World’s Midwifery 2011. Of these 58 countries, 38 were found to be lagging behind in meeting MDG 5 (reducing maternal mortality by 75%). Unless an additional 112,000 midwives are trained, deployed and retained in supportive environments, these 38 countries might not meet their target to achieve 95 percent coverage of births by skilled attendants by 2015, as required by Millennium Development Goal 5, on maternal health. Globally, 350,000 midwives are still lacking. Read more...
June 6th, 2011
By: Rati Bishnoi, Special Projects Intern at Women Deliver
The most recent graduates from Midwives for Haiti are some of the first health professionals on the island nation to use an obstetric kit specially equipped to prevent death from excessive bleeding after childbirth. Read more...
May 6th, 2011
By: Joy Marini, Director of Corporate Contributions for Johnson & Johnson, Maternal and Child Health
One day after the International Day of the Midwife, I am gathering with colleagues in Africa to discuss how we can help address the shortage of global health workers.
In sub-Saharan Africa, many women give birth alone, and without a skilled attendant such as a midwife, there is no one to address the complications of child delivery or to advise a pregnant woman to seek more skilled care. In fact, more women in this region die during pregnancy and childbirth than any other place on earth – claiming as many as one in eight lives. Read more...
May 5th, 2011
By: Janna Oberdorf, Director of Communications and Outreach for Women Deliver
Today, May 5th, is International Day of the Midwife. The world needs midwives now more than ever. The World Health Organization, UN agencies and other global partners have identified that midwives are key to achieving reductions in maternal and newborn deaths and disabilities globally, yet there is a serious shortage. Read more... and get inspired by three midwives honored on the Women Deliver 100 list of the most inspiring people delivering for girls and women, below.
Juliette Coulibaly, Côte d'Ivoire / Imtiaz Kamal, Pakistan / Dorothy Ngoma, Malawi
April 7th, 2011
By: Conrad Person, Director, Corporate Contributions, Johnson & Johnson
Today, the world marks World Health Day with ambitious goals for advancing the wellbeing of all people – with a special focus on women and children, whose fates are inextricably linked to overcoming poverty through the Millennium Development Goals. It is a time to celebrate how much progress we have made on issues like clean water and safe birth, but also a chance to reflect on the staggering gaps in health resources for women that still exist between developed and developing countries, and how we can address them. Read more...
April 4th, 2011
By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator at Women Deliver
In the Caribbean island nation of Haiti, almost 1 in 93 women die during pregnancy or childbirth, making it the country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere. Compared to its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, in which 99 percent of women deliver with the help of a skilled birth attendant (SBA), only 26 percent of Haitian women deliver with a SBA. After the disastrous earthquake in Port au Prince last year, the number of women able to give birth in facilities with SBAs has decreased due to poor transportation access and a significant ‘brain drain’ of Haitian midwives. Read more...
April 1st, 2011
This Sunday, 3 April 2011, marks Mother's Day in the UK. In honor of the occasion, we're highlighting the UK's aid efforts, as set out in their Framework for Results, that will help at least two million women to deliver their babies safely with skilled midwives, nurses and doctors. Over the next four years this support will help to save the lives of at least 50,000 women during pregnancy and childbirth and 250,000 newborns - helping more babies in the world's poorest countries grow up with the love and support of their mothers. Read more...
March 28th, 2011
By: Rati Bishnoi, Special Projects Intern at Women Deliver
In a nation where an estimated 14,000 women die each year from pregnancy related causes, the Pakistan Initiative for Mothers and Newborns (PAIMAN) has worked to both improve the ability of the nation’s health care sector to better meet mothers’ needs and increase demand for maternal and reproductive health services. Read more...
February 14th, 2011
By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator at Women Deliver
Early marriage, combined with high levels of illiteracy, poor health services and poverty, have pushed Yemen's maternal mortality rate to the highest in the Arab world – 1 in 91 women will die during pregnancy and childbirth in Yemen. In a country where a woman will give birth to an average of 5.5 children in her lifetime, access to family planning services, local midwives, and quality health centers is essential to combating the nutritional deficiencies, infection during delivery, and unintended pregnancies that many Yemeni women face. In an effort to expand family planning options and safe delivery services in the region, USAID has partnered with Pathfinder International through the Basic Health Services Program (BHS). Operating in 5 governorates in north and eastern Yemen, the BHS program aims to renovate health facilities, improve the supply of maternal health commodities and services, and involve local leaders in reproductive health education. Read more...
February 7th, 2011
By: Rati Bishnoi, Special Projects Intern
More women die giving birth in India than in any other country in the world—an unfortunate distinction caused largely by the high number of deliveries in rural areas that occur without the support of trained health care providers. One Indian nonprofit, however, is saving the lives of women by using innovative practices to provide mothers around-the-clock delivery and newborn care and working to incorporate these interventions into the government-run rural health care services system. Read more...
January 24th, 2011
By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator at Women Deliver
Bordered by Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and the Gulf of Guinea, the West African country of Nigeria is the eighth most populous country in the world with a soaring maternal mortality rate. As of 2008, the average maternal mortality rate was 840 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births and up to 1,549 deaths per 100,000 live births in rural areas. These statistics gave the Nigerian government a stern wakeup call: too many women were dying during pregnancy and childbirth with a weak healthcare workforce to support them. In 2009, the Nigerian National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHDA) took action to expand women’s access to skilled health care workers in rural and suburban regions with the Midwives Services Scheme (MSS). Read more...
January 21st, 2011
The role of skilled birth attendants, in particular midwives and others with midwifery competencies, is widely acknowledged as being crucial to addressing maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity, and to promoting women’s and children’s health. An upcoming publication entitled The State of the World’s Midwifery, from UNFPA and a coalition of partners, will take stock of recent analyses showing that both midwifery personnel and services are unequally distributed - both between and within countries.
January 3rd, 2011
By: Mariko Rasmussen, Communications Specialist at Women Deliver
While my previous posts have focused on ‘solutions’ in the Global South, today we’re focusing on maternal health in the United States where it is getting more dangerous to be a pregnant woman. In 2007, the United States ranked 41 out of 171 countries for lifetime risk of death from pregnancy related causes. That means 40 countries had better maternal health outcomes than the U.S. In 2008, the United States dropped to 50, behind countries including: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Qatar, and Puerto Rico. Today, in the U.S., 1 in 2,100 women will die in pregnancy and childbirth. Read more...
Health Care in its Social Context from SternerTurner Media on Vimeo.
584 Broadway, Suite 306
New York, NY 10012 USA
Tel: +1.646.695.9100
Fax: + 1 646.695.9145
Email: info [at] womendeliver.org
Check out these global health blogs for more information:
- Maternal Health Task Force
- Akimbo
- Maternova
- Conversations for a Better World
- Sarah Boseley's Global Health Blog
- RH Reality Check
- ONE Blog
- Oxfam International Blogs
- PAI Blog
- IntraHealth Blog
- Global Health Magazine Blog
- White Ribbon Alliance
- The FCI Blog
- Blog 4 Global Health