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Women Deliver - Addressing Maternal & Newborn Mortality
By Joanne Omang
Every minute of every day, a woman still dies needlessly during pregnancy or childbirth, most in the developing world. Ten million women are still lost in every generation – our mothers and sisters, daughters and grandmothers, wives and partners, friends and neighbors. At the same time, 4 million newborn babies die every year, also from causes that are mainly preventable.
In this silent tragedy, huge disparities exist between rich and poor countries and between the rich and the poor in all countries. One in six Afghan women will die during pregnancy, compared to one in 2,500 in the United States and one in 29,800 in Sweden, according to 2000 figures from the World Health Organization – the greatest disparity in all the indicators WHO monitors.
Women Deliver is a landmark global conference that will focus on creating political will to save the lives and improve the health of women, mothers and newborn babies around the world. It will be held Oct. 18 – 20, 2007 at the ExCel Centre in London.
Research and experience have proven that with increased political will and adequate financial investment, most women and newborns can survive so that their families, communities and nations can thrive.
To drive that point home, the theme of the conference is “Invest in Women – It Pays!”
Such investment enables women to deliver – not just the next generation but also everything development communities work to achieve: economic progress, rising rates of literacy and productivity, better health and well-being for families, communities and nations – all the while reducing poverty.
Women Deliver will be unusual in that its participants will be those who can take action on behalf of women and newborns. The 2,000 world leaders attending will include more than 100 cabinet ministers, heads of UN and other multilateral agencies, senior civil servants, health professionals, researchers, economists and reproductive health advocates.
The interactive conference program will include high-level plenaries, 80 concurrent sessions, lively debates on current controversies, strategy development and skills-building workshops. It will focus on five critical areas of investment in women:
- Improving Women’s and Newborn Health – maternal health, newborn health, family planning, comprehensive reproductive health, unsafe abortion, HIV and AIDS, and sexuality education;
- Advancing Human Rights – women’s rights, gender equality, poverty reduction, and freedom from violence;
- Expanding Financial Resources – through government aid programs, health system reform, corporate commitment, and private money;
- Building Political Will – with advocacy, communications, high-level political leadership, and youth leadership; and
- Promoting Women In the World – looking to the future on girls’ education, women and work, and leadership development.
Research and experiences shared at Women Deliver will demonstrate the critical connections between women’s health and rights and sound economies, healthy families and strong communities. The conference will be the place where critical questions can be asked and answered:
- How can we best build on past successes, including 20 years of research and experience?
- What needs to be done differently?
- Who can make it happen?
- How do we get it done?
The participants, an impressive brain trust, will outline new ways that investing in women will make pregnancy safer and enable women to reach their fullest potential.
Why Women Deliver? Why Now?
The year 2007 is critical for advancing the health and rights of women. Women Deliver marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of the global Safe Motherhood Initiative. It also comes at the midway point for the achievement by 2015 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of 2000.
In fact, MDG 5, improving maternal health (with its targets of cutting maternal mortality ratios by 75 percent and achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015), is often called the heart of the MDGs, because if it fails, the other MDGs will too. Maternal health is linked to – and underpins – all the other MDGs, particularly those aimed at improving newborn and child health (MDG 4), reducing the toll of HIV and AIDS (MDG 6), ensuring universal access to education (MDG 2), and promoting gender equality (MDG 3).
The good news is we now know how to save the lives of most of the mothers and infants who die needlessly worldwide. Using the research and experience of the Safe Motherhood Initiative’s research and pilot programs, we have made impressive gains in some places. However, the overall number of women (about 500,000 per year) and newborns (4 million) who die in pregnancy and childbirth has not dropped significantly, in large part due to lack of political will. Maternal and newborn health still receives inadequate attention and funding. Now is the time for investments in this critical field.
The Unfortunate Facts of Life in 2007
Fully 42 percent of all pregnancies everywhere experience a complication during pregnancy and childbirth, and in 8 percent of all pregnancies, the complications are life-threatening. Survival rates depend upon the distance and time women must travel to get skilled medical care. Maternal mortality, defined as the death of a pregnant woman during her pregnancy or within 42 days of pregnancy termination, has dire consequences for the woman’s family, community and country:
- Her other children are much less likely to survive to adulthood;
- Girl children are often pulled from school and required to fill their lost mother’s role in the household;
- Family income and productivity fall, affecting the entire community.
The leading killers are well known: hemorrhage, eclampsia or high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, sepsis or infections, and obstructed labor. The practical solutions are also well known:
- Access to comprehensive reproductive health services, including family planning and abortion-related services;
- Education that informs women and girls about their bodies and gives options in life beyond childbearing;
- Skilled care by nurses, midwives or doctors during pregnancy and childbirth, including emergency services, as well as care for mothers and newborn babies after delivery.
These solutions must come in the context of broad efforts to improve women’s legal rights and economic status.
Special Sessions
As the World Bank annual meeting is set in Washington on Women Deliver weekend, the bank has scheduled a special session on the conference theme, “Invest in Women – It Pays!” Ministers of finance from 32 Women Deliver target countries are being invited to the Oct. 18 special gathering, along with donor governments’ ministers of development cooperation.
The World Bank meeting agenda includes discussion of the findings and recommendations from a Women Deliver background research paper on the economic and social benefits of investments in improved maternal health.
The conference core planning group includes UNFPA, the UN Population Fund; UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund; the World Bank; WHO, the World Health Organization; the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID); the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD); the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida); Family Care International; the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF); Save the Children; and The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health.
The organizing committee includes more than 40 non-governmental organizations or NGOs. Family Care International serves as the organizing partner.
Register to attend at http://www.womendeliver.org.
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