Yesterday, I joined Pennsylvania ONE Members and representatives from CARE in a meeting with Rep. Chaka Fattah’s Chief of Staff Charles Hayden. Congressman Fattah is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and has been a supporter of many of ONE’s legislative priorities throughout his career. The meeting went very well as we were able to represent over 6,000 2nd District PA ONE Members. We made sure to ask Mr. Hayden to pass along our gratitude to Rep. Fattah for voting in favor of the PEPFAR reauthorization last year and more recently for Co-Sponsoring the Paul Simon Water for the World Act and the Initiating Foreign Aid Reform bills this Congress.
Mr. Hayden listened intently as we presented information on ONE and the reasons as to why it is critical to have leadership for those who do not have a voice. We requested Mr. Hayden to ask Rep. Fattah to please urge all other members of the House Appropriations Committee to lead by example with their votes when it comes to critical legislation that saves millions of lives. Mr. Hayden thanked us and said he would certainly pass on the specifics of our meeting to Congressman Fattah. Meeting with your Member of Congress this August is extremely important while they are in-district so they know their constituents support them in the fight against global poverty and disease. I hope all ONE Members schedule a meeting today with their respective elected official!
Recently Senators Johnny Isakson (R-GA) and Bob Corker (R-TN) went on a fact-finding trip to Africa as part of their work on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Senator Isakson is the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on African Affairs. He invited Nancy Bauer and me to represent ONE at a special private debriefing of his trip at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta. Others invited to attend included CARE state chairs Amy Kelly and Janis Sundquist, Emory University President Jim Wagner, and newly-appointed CDC chief Tom Frieden.
The trip took them to Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. In Sudan the Senators monitored the progress of the 2005 agreement between the northern and southern regions of Sudan, especially in light of the recent situation regarding removal and reinstatement of NGOs in Darfur. According to Senator Isakson, many NGOs who were expelled by the Khartoum government earlier this spring had already begun to return at the time of his trip, “but under different names, and with new restrictions.” Because the NGOs provide the only real source of healthcare (among other resources) for many people in this war-torn region, according to Senator Isakson, the continuation of humanitarian efforts for Darfurians is imperative. The key to making real change in Sudan, he added, is “making the Comprehensive Peace Agreement a reality.” Without the complete deployment of African Union troops, the region will continue to remain unsecured. The Senator also drew parallels between Sudan and the Congo with regards to the safety of women in both countries, saying, “rape is still being used as a military tool.”
Senator Isakson’s remarks, which lasted about 40 minutes, expanded on his theme of “Africa as the continent of the 21st century,” and stressed the importance of the relationship between the U.S. and the entire African continent. He noted the differences between this recent trip to Africa and another trip he took in 2002, pre-PEPFAR, and observed that the strides being made in HIV/AIDS treatment bring hope to those infected and affected. He asserted that “the drugs are working.”
Senator Isakson also lauded the work that CARE, based in his home state of Georgia, is doing on the continent. He shared a charming anecdote about a meeting he attended with a Village Savings and Loan Association at a CARE project in Tanzania, in which he witnessed the approval process for receiving a micro-loan. The loan committee had a cash box with three locks, and three different women each held a key. A prospective recipient would go before the committee to ask for a loan to open a business such as making garlic paste, dyeing batik fabrics, or making baskets, and if all three women agreed, the cash box would be opened. Then, with a wink and a laugh, he credited the success of such a program to the fact that it’s run by women – to great applause from the audience.
After his presentation, I was able to talk with Senator Isakson about his views on various topics, including the recent debates about aid to Africa and to thank him for his support of legislation that helps the world’s poorest people. I also got to meet CDC Director Tom Frieden. I was so pleased to hear Frieden ask Senator Isakson to make maternal and child health a priority, noting that although certain strides are being made with disease reduction, treatment and prevention in Africa (HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria), the infant and maternal mortality rates have not improved since 1990, according to a recently-released WHO study.
I look forward to working with Senator Isakson and his office to make sure that Africa ––and all the issues surrounding global poverty ––remain the highest priority.
Several Atlanta ONE members participated in the CARE National Conference and Celebration May 5 and 6 in Washington, DC. It was a great time for advocacy, and we met with Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA), among many Georgia Representatives from the House about three key issues: hunger and food aid, preventing child marriage worldwide, and addressing global climate change.
Solidifying the strong bond between CARE and ONE, ONE CEO David Lane kicked off our day on the Hill with a pep talk (and book review) at our breakfast plenary, leaving us with the charge that “regular people really can make things happen.”
Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA), who’s the ranking member on the Subcommittee for African Affairs, talked about Africa’s role as the “continent of the 21st century as far as American foreign policy and intervention is concerned.”
“Africa’s resources, people, and potential are tremendous,” he said. “Its problems are many. But we as a partner with the African people are already demonstrating that you can turn the tide on AIDS, you can turn the tide on malaria, you can begin to develop the infrastructure for people to have healthy, safe water and other basic supplies of human life.”
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).
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?
The Mother’s Day Every Day Campaign (led by the White Ribbon Alliance and CARE), and the Huffington Post continue their “Mother’s Day Every Day for Healthier Families, Communities and Nations” blog series this week with a post by Amb. Mark Dybul, and a post by Sarah Brown.
Some of us in the United States might be preparing to celebrate Mother’s Day with a backyard party and are worried about pesky mosquitoes after rains across the country. We should consider ourselves lucky to view mosquitoes as pests: in much of the world, mosquitoes cause malaria and malaria causes around 500 million illnesses and more than 1 million deaths each year.
Malaria is particularly devastating in Africa, where it kills a child every 30 seconds — several by the time you finish reading this posting. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable because pregnancy reduces a woman’s immunity to malaria, making her more susceptible to infection and increasing the risk of illness, severe anemia and death. For the child, maternal malaria increases the risk of stillbirth, premature delivery and low birth weight. And 80 percent of malaria deaths are among children under 5. Malaria is a major cause of maternal and child death.
I’m starting to see more and more discussion on the blogs and in women’s magazines about third wave feminism. It’s like those of us lucky enough to benefit from our mother’s efforts to urge and discover greater freedoms for women are suddenly all thinking ‘so now what?’
For me, the discussions of new feminism give us a chance to talk about one of the great insights of the old sort: that women without economic power in the end tend to be denied social, political and personal power too. So if we seriously want our century to be a women’s one, we need to think about what injustices remain for women in the developing world.
I listened recently to the group of African First Ladies gathered together for a health summit in the US and watched them work out how to build their programs and figure out how to put maternal health at the heart of what they do. They recognized readily that this is the keystone to addressing everything else. At some point we must change how we measure our existing work – our programs for international development, for education for all, for combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and polio, for economic empowerment and cultural change. We need to know how well we are doing on maternal mortality, or we won’t know how well we are doing in bringing real justice.
The Mother’s Day Every Day Campaign (led by the White Ribbon Alliance and CARE), and the Huffington Post continue their “Mother’s Day Every Day for Healthier Families, Communities and Nations” blog series this week with this post by Representative Lois Capps:
Each May, we celebrate and honor mothers. The treasure of motherhood is something that people of every political philosophy and walk of life can agree on. But despite this veneration of motherhood, giving birth can still be dangerous, especially in places where it is difficult to access healthcare.
Every minute of every day, a woman somewhere in the world dies as a result of pregnancy or childbirth–amounting to more than half a million fatalities each year. In developing nations, a woman’s lifetime risk of dying from reproductive problems is as high as one in seven, and problems with pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of the disease burden among women.
But the problem is far from isolated to the developing world. While the average risk of a woman dying in childbirth is 1 in 8000 for industrialized countries, the risk in the United States is much higher: 1 in 4800. In fact, the U.S. ranks 41st in the world in terms of maternal mortality.
-Margaret McDonnell, US NGO Partnerships & Faith Relations Team
The Huffington Post has joined with the Mother’s Day Every Day Campaign (led by the White Ribbon Alliance and CARE) in the global movement to call upon world leaders to invest in health workers and strengthen health systems. These are necessary to ensure that every day, everywhere in the world, all women and newborns have access to lifesaving care. Every day until Mother’s Day will feature a post from the campaign advisory committee members and global champions such as Donna Shalala, Ann Venemen, UK First Lady Sarah Brown, Liya Kebede, Theresa Shaver and Helene Gayle.
Check out the first post “Leading the Way to Make Mothers Day Every Day” by Secretary Donna Shalala and UNICEF Director Ann Veneman.
On this Mother’s Day, we celebrate the women around the world who gave us life. We appreciate the untold sacrifices they made so we could be healthy and happy. We recognize all that they have done outside our families to build better, safer and more prosperous communities, nations and world.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the resource-poor developing countries where women play a critical role in breaking the cycle of poverty.
Unfortunately, many women and their families in these parts of the world don’t have much to celebrate this Mother’s Day. The loss of life from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth continues at alarming rates.
Every minute a woman from these regions dies in pregnancy or childbirth. Last year, that totaled more than 536,000 women, leaving behind families devastated by a loss that in most cases could have been prevented. But the tragedy doesn’t stop there. Last year, more than 3.7 million newborns died, 75 percent within seven days of birth. They, too, would almost always survive, if there was access to basic health care services that we often take for granted here in the United States.
-Margaret McDonnell, US NGO Partnerships & Faith Relations Team
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
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