The Mother’s Day Every Day Campaign (led by the White Ribbon Alliance and CARE), and the Huffington Post ran a great Mother’s Day blog series recently with a post by Helene Gayle and Theresa Shaver. (You can check out others in the series here).

Excerpts from the Gayle/Shaver piece below:

The recent and rapid global response to the threat of a swine flu pandemic has shown us what world leaders can do if they have the will power. We applaud the steps that were taken, including by the Obama Administration and the International Monetary Fund. Their swift mobilization of resources, providing assistance to the Mexican government and informing the public about steps to prevent the spread of infection undoubtedly saved lives. Thankfully, at this time, it appears that reported cases were fewer than 2,000 with 48 deaths worldwide.

Meanwhile, as has been true for the last two decades, every minute somewhere in the world a woman dies in childbirth. Every year, 536,000 families, 99 percent living in developing regions, are left devastated by the tragic and incalculable loss of a daughter, a wife, a mother.

Why — despite repeated pledges by world leaders and international consensus on proven success strategies — have the numbers of women dying needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth virtually remained the same as the 1980s?

-Margaret McDonnell