Updates

By: Toyin Ajao, winner of the Women Bloggers Deliver contest

Yesterday, on the Carbon for Water campaign trail, we met with Francis Odhiambo, the provincial public health officer of the Western Province in Kenya. He had a great impact in helping connect the dots between having safe drinking water, combating diseases and women having safe pregnancies and deliveries. Mr. Francis Odhiambo believed strongly that women suffer twice as much as men on health issues relating to water borne disease because of their daily activities and chores around the house and for their families. Women not only face the hardship of looking for nonexistent safe water, but they also have to trek miles to get stream water and firewood for boiling it. Read more...

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

By: Janna Oberdorf, Director of Communications and Outreach at Women Deliver

Today is World Malaria Day—and there is much to celebrate. Over the past decade, malaria cases have drastically declined and deaths from malaria have been reduced. As we celebrate the many successes of the past decade in fighting malaria around the world, it’s important to put a spotlight on those who are most vulnerable to malaria—pregnant women and their children. Read more...

A 9.0 magnitude earthquake, which is the largest to hit Japan since records began, hit the north-east of the country on 11 March 2011. It was followed by a series of strong aftershocks, and also triggered a massive tsunami, which has destroyed most of the cities and villages on the north-east coast of Japan. During periods following a major natural disaster, women often lose access to basic health services, as public health and clinical care infrastructure are disrupted. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator at Women Deliver

New maternal health care services are bringing hope-and survival- to the women of Georgia. For 69 years, they suffered under a Soviet medical system with inefficient hospitals and clinics, poor geographical distribution of health facilities, and rampant financial instability. Healthcare for pregnant women and their families was no better, leaving women with a 1 in 1,300 risk of maternal death over their lifetimes and lack of access to low cost family planning methods. Since the country declared independence in 1991, it has been gradually bolstering the health system with the hope of providing all citizens with the services they deserve. Read more...

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Communications Specialist at Women Deliver

The West African country of Liberia is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be pregnant - 1 in 20 women will die during pregnancy or childbirth. This high statistic is the result of a protracted civil war that has damaged the country’s health infrastructure—there is severe shortage of trained personnel, a lack of medical equipment and supplies, and pregnant women often have to travel long distances just to reach a health clinic. But the government, under the leadership of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is welcoming innovative new projects to help lower the country’s high rate of maternal deaths. One such project began this month, with the opening of the first of seven ‘maternity waiting homes’ in Bong County, in north-central Liberia. Read more...

Fast Company's annual Most Innovative Companies issue today named Voxiva the 40^th most innovative company in the world for “encouraging good health via mobile apps,” bolstering Voxiva’s leadership position in the mobile health field. Voxiva was also 3rd on their list of the Top 10 innovators in the Mobile Industry. Women Deliver congratulates Voxiva on this great news, and agrees with Fast Company editor Robert Safian when he says that, "Innovation has never been more important to our economy and our future." Read more...

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...

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Communications Specialist at Women Deliver

Studies have shown that when women give birth less than 15 months after a previous birth, their risk of dying from pregnancy related causes is 150% higher than for women who wait longer to give birth again. When pregnancies are too close together, newborns can be born too soon, too small, or with a low birth weight, may not grow well and are more likely to die before the age of five. Birth spacing – allowing three to five years to pass between births – is a very important maternal and child health intervention. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator at Women Deliver

Roughly 78,000 women in India die during pregnancy and childbirth per year, some of the world’s largest numbers of country-level maternal deaths. Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are the two largest and most populous states in India, generating a large percentage of the maternal mortality and morbidity in the country. In 2008, PATH aimed to address these disparities with the Sure Start Project, a holistic approach to maternal health systems strengthening. Read more...

Jessica Valenti shares her personal experience with birth complications and how it changed her life. Click through to read her full blog post.

By: Jessica Valenti, author and founder of Feministing.com; originally posted on her website jessicavalenti.com 

As you may already know, I had a baby – a daughter named Layla Sorella Valenti-Golis. That’s the good (nay, wonderful!) news. The bad news is that she was born way too early; I developed severe pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome and had to deliver Layla when I was 29 weeks pregnant.

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Program Assistant at Women Deliver

Five days after twin bombings hit the capital city of Uganda in July, the annual African Union Summit converged world leaders to discuss the theme of maternal and infant health, highlighting the issue of political instability and civil unrest in relation to development issues. While Uganda has made progress in improving maternal health, meeting MDG 5 will require a steep decline from 550 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2005, to 131 in 2015. It remains a daunting task, but Uganda has implemented a number of interventions aimed at improving maternal and child health and increased government funding towards such projects. Read more...

The new issue of Ms. Magazine hit newstands today and includes a great feature article on maternal mortality in Tanzania. Ms. has been a wonderful vehicle for putting a spotlight on Maternal Health, and participated at the Women Deliver 2010 conference. This article is the third in a Ms. series on maternal mortality and the efforts being made to save women’s lives. Read more...

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Program Assistant at Women Deliver

Nestled between China and India, Nepal is a mountainous and mostly rural country that has experienced years of political instability, making transport and communications especially difficult. The rugged terrain often prevents people from accessing health care, and many women give birth at home without the presence of a skilled health worker. In addition, it is common for girls to marry in their teens, which is particularly problematic as young women have an increased risk of pregnancy and childbirth complications. Read more...

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Program Assistant at Women Deliver

Imagine a woman home alone and going into premature childbirth. She feels helpless and scared, and begins to bleed. Now imagine this woman has a mobile phone. She feels connected and more secure, knowing help is a text or phone call away. And if she had had access to a phone during her pregnancy, prenatal text messages could have prepared her for such an emergency. It is no surprise that increasing the use of mobile phones among women is a key strategy to reducing maternal and newborn mortality, and one of the five technologies that Women Deliver is championing to reach MDG5. Read more...

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Program Assistant at Women Deliver

Today is Blog Action Day and this year’s topic is water. What does safe water have to do with maternal health? A lot. To significantly improve maternal, newborn, and reproductive health, it requires access to quality care for pregnancy and childbirth. Safe health care requires safe water, as well as basic sanitation and waste management. Infections directly contribute to 36% of newborn deaths and sepsis accounts for 15% of maternal deaths in developing countries. If a hospital lacks adequate plumbing, or a village experiences a water shortage, it makes women and children especially vulnerable to the destructive effects of unsafe water. Contact with unsafe water can result in exposure to a wide variety of bacteria, viruses and parasites and therefore can result in waterborne disease, and in some cases, death. Diarrhea weakens pregnant women’s immune systems and results in morbidity and mortality among infants and children under 5. Read more...

Launched today, in anticipation of the UN Summit on the MDGs, is a new media initiative that draws artists and activists together behind one goal: improving maternal health, the fifth MDG, on which progress has lagged most.

Cofounded by Emmy-winning filmmaker Lisa Russell and Grammy-winning singer Maya Azucena, MDGFive.com includes creative content by world-renowned musicians and poets, including Zap Mama, DJ Spooky, Toni Blackman, and Carlos Andrés Gómez, as well as visual material from filmmakers and photographers Christy Turlington Burns, Paul Blackthorne, and Azfar Rizvi. The site features a “remixer” that can be used to create short videos using a library of music tracks, spoken word, film, and photos supplied by renowned mixed media artists from Brazil, Honduras, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and other countries.

By: Janna Oberdorf, Communications Manager for Women Deliver; originally posted at the MHTF Blog

Clean Birth Kits. It seems like a no-brainer. And, as one audience member at the Global Maternal Health Conference said, “There’s no doubt these would work.”

But, there is doubt, as I learned at today’s session, “Clean birth kits: do we need them?”. There’s serious speculation on what impact and effect clean birth kits (CBKs) would have on saving lives. The session panelists presented a review of the existing evidence on clean birth practices and the potential role for CBKs in supporting these preventive practices, and they found serious gaps in knowledge and research.