When you have a minute, check out Lauren Seyfried’s piece at DipNote reflecting on last week’s “Women Deliver” conference. (You can read our own Erin Hohlfelder’s write-up of the conference here.)
In it, she writes:
Participants of the conference were well aware of the sobering magnitude of the work yet to be done in this field, and one of the main themes that resonated throughout the conference is the need for committed political leadership on these critical issues. The message cannot be ignored; political will is essential to accessing the resources necessary to meet the Millennium Development Goals — particularly MDG #5, which is focused on the improvement of maternal health.
The conference also reminded participants of the U.S. commitment to making women’s health a priority. Through the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) the United States will invest $63 billion over six years to help partner countries improve health outcomes through strengthened health systems — with a particular focus on improving the health of women, newborns and children through programs including infectious disease, nutrition, maternal and child health, and safe water.
In spite of the obstacles, a positive, concurrent theme also has emerged from the conference: the acknowledgement of successes, whether these be small, like helping a mother of six gain access to family planning services, or large, such as the Gates Foundation’s commitment of $1.5 billion to maternal and child health. These victories must be told here and continue to be told to the international community in order to exemplify and celebrate the improvements being made for the lives of the world’s women by the international actors, advocates and leaders present at this conference.
The miracle of birth is astonishing, humbling, and wonderful to behold. After witnessing my nephew’s delivery, I thought a maternity ward must be the best place in the world to work.
But anyone who works there for long knows that it doesn’t always go well. Modern technology and good obstetric training help many in the developed world avoid difficulties during birth, but in the developing world—where health facilities can be difficult to reach, understaffed and lacking in even basic equipment and medicine— delivering a baby can be filled with danger.
Our team at the Pulitzer Center would like to solicit your thoughts, experiences and opinions on maternal health. To do that, we’ve teamed up with the writers’ site Helium to sponsor a writing contest that we hope will prompt a global conversation. The question for the competition is:
“Hundreds of thousands of women die each year due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. What are first steps to making a difference?”
For me, witnessing a birth—even one without complications—was a life-changing experience that’s motivated me to raise awareness about maternal mortality issues. I know the collection of essays inspired by this contest will be a powerful voice in that effort and I look forward to reading them.
The deadline for the competition is Thursday, June 24 so make sure to submit your essay right away (http://www.pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=161). All submitted essays will be shown on the Helium and Pulitzer websites and a winner will be selected from the 10 best entries as judged by the Helium community. The winner will receive the Pulitzer Center Global Issues/Citizen Voices Award and will be announced on Wednesday, July 7.
-Kate Steger, Outreach Specialist, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
I just saw Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, on the Hill after her testimony to the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight on the role of women in politics and civil society.
I had the opportunity to thank her for joining Melinda Gates and thousands of ONE members this spring on the Women ONE2ONE Interactive Conference Call . She said that her participation on the call seemed “small” in comparison to the efforts of ONE to promote child and maternal health in the developing world. She also expressed her excitement over Ms. Gates’ announcement Monday that the Gates Foundation had committed $1.5 billion over the next five years “to support family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition programs in developing countries.”
Thank you to Amb. Verveer and Melinda Gates, two agents of change empowering women worldwide!
First premiered in Washington, D.C., powerful photos from the Women ONE2ONE trip to Ghana and Sierra Leone went to Rock Hill, South Carolina, last week. This exhibit gives light to effective US investments that have empowered women in the developing world to be agents of change in their communities as entrepreneurs, farmers, health care workers, and organizers.
ONE member Stephen Crotts hosted “Women Who Go Beyond” in his gallery at the Gettys Art Center to share these incredible success stories with local art enthusiasts at the Old Town Art Crawl. Local Congressional District Leader Phillip Reynolds represented ONE at the event and signed up new members.
You can listen to Phillip and ONE photographer Morgana Wingard discuss the photo exhibit on the local talk show Palmetto Mornings here.
Check out this post from Dr. Fred Sai, co-host of Women Deliver 2010 and former advisor to the Ghanaian government on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. You can follow the live stream of the Women Deliver 2010 conference from June 7th to 9th at www.womendeliver.org/webcast.
This March, the Lancet released new statistics that revealed an unprecedented drop in the number of women who die every year during pregnancy and childbirth. The study found that from 1980 to 2008, maternal deaths globally have fallen from 500,000 each year to 340,000. Having spent some 40 years working on women and children’s health in Ghana and across Africa, I welcomed this progress. But as the world celebrated, I also couldn’t help but wonder, “Where is Africa?”
It is an unfortunate truth that progress for the world at large does not necessarily mean progress for Africa. In 1980, almost a quarter of maternal deaths occurred in African countries. Today that figure has doubled to more than half. All but one of the 30 countries with the worst maternal mortality statistics are in Africa. And while countries like Ghana and Rwanda have seen a steady decline in maternal deaths over the past 15 years, others such as Malawi, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire actually have higher maternal mortality rates than they did in 1990.
Addressing maternal mortality in Africa is complex and challenging. Our countries face increasing rates of HIV, entrenched and debilitating poverty, food shortages, weak education and health care systems, problematic governance, corruption, and civil conflict. These are huge issues in their own right, but they also have significant impact on maternal, newborn and child health. The challenges, however, are not the whole story.
Many African leaders understand the urgency of addressing the maternal health crisis, despite its complexity. They have a sister, a niece, or a daughter who has died—or if they do not, they certainly understand the broader impact maternal death has on their countries. Women are the heart of African economies. They transport two-thirds of all goods that are moved and produce 60-80 percent of the food in the developing world. And maternal and infant deaths account for $15 billion in lost productivity.
It doesn’t need to be like this. I am confident that we can address this crisis if we shift our approach and start investing in women. We must increase women’s access to health services. We must promote business development and support women with grants and loans. We must ensure that girls have access to quality education. And we must work to convince our neighbors, be they relatives or countries, to prioritize women and girls in all that they do.
Many African governmental, academic and civil society leaders have answered this call and taken bold, local action to address this urgent issue. For example in November 2009, leading African science academies gathered together to produce scientific guidelines for reducing maternal mortality across the continent. In my home country of Ghana, two successive governments have championed free maternal health care for all. Ghana is now seeing what improving maternal health can do for a country. Despite the global recession, the economy has been growing, and of all African countries, it has made some of the most progress on the Millennium Development Goals.
African leaders are also insisting, rightfully, that their voice on this issue be heard. In less than two weeks, I will be joining 16 health and finance ministers and 15 members of parliament from 22 countries in Africa at Women Deliver, the largest global conference on maternal health in the past decade. Just weeks before the June G8/G20 meeting in Canada—where maternal health will be a top priority—Women Deliver will call on member states to increase their financial commitments to women and girls.
In July, African leaders will gather again at the Summit of the African Union. Here they are expected to renew the Maputo Protocol (which I should point out was drafted by African leaders) and includes perhaps the most comprehensive set of women’s rights ever recorded in an international treaty. With strong efforts like these, African governments have shown the depth of their commitment to these issues. Now, we need to follow through.
African countries are not alone in this struggle. In fact, in recent years, maternal deaths in the United States have also taken a dramatic turn for the worse. And addressing maternal health globally requires more than just African commitments. It depends on action from donor countries, other developing countries, businesses, and non-government and multilateral organizations alike. But African countries have the most to lose in this struggle and also the most to gain. This issue is about our family members and friends; it is about our economies and our countries; and it is about the survival and future of our children.
Reducing maternal deaths is not a simple battle, and the increasing ratio of maternal death in African countries will continue to shame and burn me until we see progress across the continent. I do, however, rest a little bit easier seeing the momentum around this issue. And I hope that when the next round of statistics are released, the story is about African progress—progress that was spearheaded by Africans. When you look at the statistics, you might also ask the question, “Where is Africa?” You can be sure that Africa is here. I urge you to support our effort.
A few weeks ago we told you that Vital Voices was teaming up with Diane von Furstenberg as part of May’s YouTube Video Volunteers project (ONE and Jeremy Piven partnered on this project in March).
On Sunday the project came to a close, with a new Vital Voices video—along with the three winning videos submitted to YouTube Video Volunteers— featured front and center on the YouTube homepage. The film tells the powerful story of Kakenya Ntaiya, a woman who built the first school for girls in her Maasai village in Kenya. Check it out below!
In 2006 I had never heard of obstetric fistula, a devastating childbirth injury caused by obstructed labor. You may be unfamiliar with fistula, since it has been almost completely eradicated in the U.S. through modern care and the use of C-sections. Fistula affects over two million women—predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. In fact, over 100,000 of these women are in Ethiopia and the number grows by over 9,000 every year.
Women’s stories who suffer from obstetric fistula are always similar; a woman loses her baby in a long, painful, obstructed labor and then wakes up to the horror of incontinence. A woman with fistula is often abandoned by her husband, ostracized by her family and village and left to live the rest of her life alone and ashamed. While fistula can be cured, less than 4,000 women per year can be treated in Ethiopia. And many women who do receive help still live as outcasts from their families or struggle to reintegrate as productive members of their community.
Last year, Allison Shigo and I decided to take action. We launched Healing Hands of Joy, a non-profit to help empower Ethiopian women who have suffered from fistula reclaim hope for their future, reintegrate back into their communities and receive basic maternal health care services for their needs. Our dream is to help eradicate this terrible affliction in Ethiopia, beginning with our pilot prevention project. Through this project, we will begin making motherhood safer by working with the Tigray Government Bureau of Health and training patients at the Mekelle Fistula Hospital. Please visit our website to find out more and see what you can do to help.
-Brett O’Donnell, Co-Founder, Healing Hands of Joy
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.
Check out this post from Dr. Fred Sai, co-host of Women Deliver 2010 and former advisor to the Ghanaian government on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. You can follow the live stream of the Women Deliver 2010 conference from June 7th to 9th at 
In 2006 I had never heard of 
Last year, Allison Shigo and I decided to take action. We launched 
