Mother and Child Health_In Focus 2010
In the wake of the G8 in Canada, during which wealthy nations gathered to discuss and pledge their commitments to maternal, newborn, and child health, African leaders met this week in Uganda for the 15th African Union Summit. Dr. Jotham Musinguzi, Africa regional director of Partners in Population & Development, gives us his take on the Summit’s discussions and how he sees momentum from the Summit carrying forward into this fall’s MDG Summit in New York City and beyond.
No more excuses. That was the main message coming out of Kampala this past week after the 15th African Union Summit brought African leaders and high-ranking ministers together under the auspices of “maternal, infant and child health and development in Africa.”
In a debate session that lasted more than twice the allotted time, African leaders discussed the critical role of maternal health in moving the African continent forward. Leaders also agreed to renew the Maputo Plan of Action (PDF), a critical framework that ensures the rights and health of women and girls on issues of education, safe abortion, family planning and economic opportunity. Having it signed, in place and ready to be actualized is absolutely imperative.
No more excuses — we must address maternal health and women’s rights issues in Africa. While there has been outstanding leadership on these issues from all over the continent, our maternal health indicators continue to dwindle at the utmost bottom, globally. The vastness of the African continent, coupled with the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the levels of poverty in many parts of our countries mean that the road to improving maternal health could not be harder.
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Gary Darmstadt of the Gates Foundation posted this amazing piece today on their new blog, Foundation Notes. I hope you’ll check it out.
As a gynecologist in Bangladesh, Dr. Ferdousi Begum saw firsthand the effects of that country’s staggering infant mortality rate.
And while she worked hard to save as many patients as possible, she knew that the poorest, most rural communities in her country needed more than she – or the limited number of other doctors like her – could provide. So she began training volunteers to provide basic care to pregnant women in their own communities. Since 2005, Dr. Begum’s dedication has had remarkable results: she has trained 3,200 volunteers, who have provided care to 300,000 women, treated 83,000 kids for pneumonia and diarrhea, and done much more.
Her efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. In 2008, Save the Children hired Dr. Begum to serve as the program manager for its Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health division. Save the Children is one of the foundation’s key partners, and we’re excited about the life-saving work they are doing, with Dr. Begum’s leadership, to deliver proven interventions and save lives in Bangladesh and other countries. Thanks to efforts like theirs, there are encouraging signs of new momentum on maternal and child health. For the first time in decades, the number of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth has dropped significantly, and child deaths continue to decline.
Here at the Gates Foundation, improving the health of mothers and young children is one of our top priorities. As Melinda Gates shared yesterday in her speech at Women Deliver, we are committed to developing and delivering solutions to ensure that mothers and their children around the world have the chance to thrive.
Learn more about Dr. Begum and Save the Children’s work in Bangladesh, in this profile by GOOD magazine.
Huge, huge news: Just now, at the Women Deliver conference in DC, Melinda Gates announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is committing $1.5 billion in grants toward maternal, newborn and child health over the next five years.
Specifically, these grants will include training frontline health care workers, introducing low-cost, effective interventions to stem newborn infections and treat birth complications, and educating mothers about simple lifesaving practices like keeping newborns warm with their body heat.
Below is an excerpt from her remarkable speech:
Today, we are committing to make new grants totaling $1.5 billion over the next five years to support family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition programs in developing countries.
This new pledge will complement our spending in other areas that affect women’s and children’s health, such as developing and delivering children’s vaccines, and preventing pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and HIV/AIDS.
I’m also making women’s and children’s health my personal priority as co-chair of the Gates Foundation.
My commitment to you is that I will continue to talk to leaders in rich countries about making funding pledges and following through on them. I will continue to talk to leaders in poor countries about making women and children a policy priority.
We will continue having this conversation about the work we’re doing together. We hold the future in our hands.
ONE’s Erin Hohlfelder is at the actual conference with Melinda now and will report back more soon.
I’m speaking at the Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C., today to highlight maternal, child, and reproductive health as a global priority.
Three months ago, I traveled to a village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where I met a young mother named Rukmini. Six days before, she’d given birth to a daughter she named Durga, after the Hindu goddess of power.
According to custom, Rukmini and Durga remained in the same room after the birth. Seven days later, Rukmini carried Durga into the light of day for a ceremony that celebrated the special bond between mother and child, called Chhathi. As their neighbors drummed and sang songs, Rukmini held Durga up to thank the sun god for a healthy birth and ask for his blessing.
I kept thinking about the overwhelming joy, hope, and optimism I felt when each of my three children was born. No matter who you are, no matter where you live, it is incredibly moving to hold a healthy baby in your arms.
But tens of millions of women never get to experience that moment of beauty. For these women, childbirth is filled not with joy, but with dread, pain, and sorrow. They know they might die during delivery. If they survive, they are terrified their baby might die.
The world is now coming together to save the 350,000 mothers and 3 million newborns who die every year. At Women Deliver, we are nurturing a vision that is changing the world.
- Donors will spend more on women and children, and those donations will be tracked.
- Developing countries will pass rigorous policies for women’s and children’s health, and fully fund their implementation, and health workers will have the tools and training they need.
- Communities will work together to gather solid evidence about the interventions that work best, and combine them into a comprehensive plan to save lives.
- Women everywhere will have the knowledge and power to save their lives and the lives of their babies.
We can make a new world for mothers like Rukmini. When she hugs her daughter Durga, she holds the future in her hands.
In the comments below, please share what you are going to do to bring about this vision of the world.
For more information, go to the foundation’s Women Deliver page or the Women Deliver website. In this recent blog post, I share more of what I’ve seen around the world, the success stories in Malawi and India, and the foundation’s approach to saving women’s and children’s lives.
-Melinda French Gates
