June 16 was the Day of the African Child. This year’s discussion, “Africa Fit for Children: Call for Accelerated Action Towards Their Survival,” was jointly hosted by the African Union and the African Diplomatic Corps, the Global Health Council, Save the Children, and the US Coalition for Child Survival. The panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Charles MacCormack, President and CEO of Save the Children, included Her Excellency Amina Salum Ali, Ambassador of the African Union to the United States, Her Excellency Hawa Ndilowe, Ambassador of Malawi to the US, His Excellency Abdoulaye Diop, Ambassador of Mali to the US, Gloria Steele from USAID, and World Health Organization (WHO) Ambassador Liya Kebede.

Here are some highlights:

Her Excellency Amina Salum Ali: The Day of the African Child marks the third year celebration of good practices in Africa. During the past 5-7 years many countries, including Malawi, Botswana, Libya, and Ethiopia, have seen a reduction in child mortality. If Africa continues in this way, it will be on its way to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. However efforts on the ground need to be strengthened; Africa is capable of even more.

Her Excellency Hawa Olga Ndilowe: Africa has faced many challenges in health care and although there has been progress, more work lies ahead. Over the past few years Malawi has mainly focused on reducing child mortality and morbidity. To do this, the country has adopted three main community-level areas of focus:

• Prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS
• Breast feeding: Generally, the recommendation in Malawi is that women living with HIV should not breast feed. This proves to be a big challenge as breastfeeding is usually the most affordable option.
• Increased access to clean water and sanitation, medications and education.

These strategies have been successful. Malawi has witnessed significant improvements in its mortality rates: maternal mortality has reduced from 234 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1992 to 122 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006. In addition, infant mortality has reduced from 134 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1999 to 69 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2006. These figures are proof that we have the tools to save the lives of millions of women and children, we only have to reach them.

His Excellency Abdoulaye Diop: Through partnerships with UNICEF and Save the Children, the Ministry of Health is embarking on a national child survival strategy. Vulnerable groups – particularly mothers and newborns – will be a focus of integrated care at the community level. To care for both mother and child, community health care should be strengthened and focused on child immunizations, bed nets, and treatment. The Ministry of Health is eager to strengthen international partnerships, such as with Save the Children, and not only increase the frequency of care, but also the quality.

Gloria Steele: Many advocates have moved beyond rhetoric and into action and are getting results: there is renewed support for maternal and child health care – Congress increased its budget by 25% last year. Additionally, in 2008, the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) reached 25 million people in one year alone. However, there is still a long way to go – 50 million children still suffer from malaria. Using resources more efficiently and integrating all our initiatives – including education, food security, and global health – can yield more results. Also, building capacity in these regions, including health systems, will help produce sustainable results.

Liya Kebede: “No woman should die giving life.” 99% percent of maternal deaths occur in developing countries, and about half of these deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. and 45% of women in sub-Saharan Africa deliver their babies in the absence of skilled attendance. The death of a mother severely affects the lives of her children: children who lose their mothers are five times more likely to die in infancy, more likely to miss out on life saving vaccinations, and less likely to go to school. Action is important now, especially as the H.R. 1410 Bill: Newborn, Child and Mother Survival Act, sponsored by Congresswoman Betty McCollum, is on the agenda for Congress.

-Pooja Gupta & Eloho Ovhori

The pond in Jisonayili, Tamale, where a girl drowned collecting water. Photo: WaterAid / Jon Spaull

If today is a typical day, 4,000 children under five will die from diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe water and inadequate sanitation. Millions of women will spend hours collecting water from rivers, streams and other distant sources, rather than earning money or growing food. Thousands of children will miss school due to water-related illness or water collection.

The impacts that unsafe water and sanitation have on health, education and livelihoods are profound, but well documented. It’s a disturbing, but sadly familiar tale.

But whenever I visit a WaterAid program and speak with communities, I am caught by surprise hearing individual accounts about the less expected, but no less devastating, costs of unsafe water.

In Tamale in Ghana, I spoke with a community mourning the loss of a young girl who died due to an unsafe water source – not from drinking the water, but because she fell into an open pond and drowned. When families are struggling to survive, adults simply do not always have the time to supervise children collecting water.

In the Kiteto District of Tanzania, women were crushed and killed when a hand-dug well collapsed on them.

In the mountains of Nepal, a grandmother confessed the guilt she felt at leaving her baby grandson unattended every morning. She had no choice: she could not carry him up the steep rocky path from the water source, and the family needed water, so babysitting had to come second.

Mana Laxmi Shakya, from Nigalopani village in Nepal, with the grandson she has to leave alone while collecting water. Photo: WaterAid / Libby Plumb

In Ethiopia, villagers expressed their gratitude for a new water point, telling how it would save women from being sexually assaulted as they crossed a forest to reach the river where they used to collect water.

Investing in safe water supplies is essential in improving health, reducing infant mortality and boosting productivity. But it’s also a vital key in keeping families safe in other ways: freeing up time for families to spend together, and increasing the security of women.

Investing in water is not only an investment in economic growth and poverty reduction, but it is an investment in people. And that is why the U.S. Government must continue to strengthen its work to support developing country governments in their efforts to deliver the basic service of safe water to those in need.

To learn more about how WaterAid works to overcome poverty by enabling the world’s poorest people to gain access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene education, please visit www.wateraidamerica.org.

-Libby Plumb, Senior Communications Advisor, WaterAid America

Our first on-the-ground post from our delegation traveling through Ethiopia and Ghana. Learn more about our trip here.

Yesterday we spent time at the Mother-to-Mother program at Adama Referral Hospital in Ethiopia. The hospital is a comprehensive HIV/AIDS service site, currently providing over 12,000 people with HIV care and more than 7,300 people with antiretroviral therapy.

The Mother-to-Mother program offers support groups for expectant mothers who are newly diagnosed with HIV. Mothers already living with HIV gather with expectant mothers recently diagnosed with HIV to mentor, educate and listen to each other.

Visiting with the mothers at the Mother-to-Mother program was a rare opportunity for an intimate discussion. We were able to speak on a personal level with mothers suffering from HIV, but these women didn’t speak of suffering. They spoke of surviving. They were gathered together to support one another through the experience of having a child while being HIV positive. I was moved by their stories and their perseverance. They were attending support groups twice a week, working to be strong mothers to their children and helping to spread the word about HIV prevention. As our discussion ended, one woman asked that we not forget them. My memory is strong. It was a true honor.

-Kathleen Biden

UPDATED: Here’s Maggie Williams on her visit to the Mother-to-Mother program

And here is Senator John Sununu on the Mother-to-Mother program

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday made it clear that investment in agricultural productivity and the fight against hunger are priorities for the government, saying, “The issue of chronic hunger and food security is at the top of the agenda that we’re pursuing here in the State Department and in the Obama Administration,” She was speaking at the 2009 World Food Prize Awards ceremony, which honored Dr. Gebisa Ejeta, an agricultural scientist who helped develop hybrids of sorghum, a vital African crop, which are resistant to many common problems, including drought and weeds. Dr. Ejeta’s scientific advances have helped increase agricultural yields in regions most prone to food insecurity.

In her speech at the prize ceremony, Secretary Clinton spoke to the growing challenges caused by global hunger. Hunger is not merely a physical condition, she said; hunger also threatens economic productivity and global security, as well as the success of education and health programs. Hungry children, for example, struggle to concentrate in school and cannot make the most of their education. Despite the growing global number of hungry people, and the mounting difficulties caused by hunger, Secretary Clinton emphasized that with a comprehensive, long-term strategy, and donor support, it is possible for the planet to produce enough for all people to feed themselves and their families.

Secretary Clinton outlined the seven principles guiding this Administration’s effort to construct a comprehensive agriculture plan to achieve global food security and economic productivity:

• Increase agricultural productivity by improving access to quality seeds, fertilizers, irrigation, tools, and credit, and train farmers to use these inputs effectively.
• Stimulate the private sector by improving storage and food processing facilities, rural roads and transportation, and other infrastructure that enables farmers to get their products to market.
• Maintain natural resources so farmland remains productive in the future, including helping countries to adapt to climate change.
• Expand knowledge by investing in research and development, as well as training, cultivating the next generation of plant scientists.
• Facilitate increased trade to help farmers to sell crops domestically and internationally.
• Support policy reform and good governance which will help agriculture flourish.
• Support women and families, as 70% of the world’s farmers are women who are, to this point, largely neglected by agricultural programming.

In the near future, Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack will seek guidance from experts in the field as the administration creates a strategic agricultural initiative. Secretary Clinton stressed that agricultural development will not come from a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

Secretary Clinton concluded that an international strategy is necessary to increase agricultural productivity and address global hunger, and that the U.S. has a particular opportunity to lead. “Now for us, sustainable agriculture won’t be a side project. It is a central element of our foreign policy,” she declared. She encouraged the international community to also make agriculture a priority.

This is an excellent first step towards fulfilling the administration’s commitment to address food insecurity, and increase agricultural investment and productivity. We at ONE look forward to what comes next. We will continue to track the administration’s commitment to agriculture, and encourage you to check back to the blog for updates.

-Beth Adler and Pooja Gupta

I just returned from a trip to Mali with five courageous American women. We witnessed the needless suffering so many women experience because they fight to survive on less than $1US a day. Not only do they live in deplorable conditions, but often, no one really pays much attention to their health needs—sometimes, not even themselves.

But there are real glimmers of hope.

My trip was with Physicians for Peace, which sends countless medical volunteers like me to take their teaching skills to some of the most desperate and impoverished places in the world. Sometimes they deal with diseases unheard of in developed countries– none more devastating and debilitating than obstetric fistula, the result of prolonged obstructed labor.

The six of us joined with our colleagues at the Millennium Cities Initiative and Mali’s leading fistula expert, Dr. Kalilou Ouattara, to learn, to teach and to empower.

This sinister condition, affecting millions of womn– most in Sub-Saharan Africa—is, as Dr. Ouattara says a “barometer of maternal health. When fistula decreases, maternal health is improving.” Fistula is a frequent reminder of failed health care systems, gender inequity and the pervasive insidiousness of poverty and the toll it takes on women.

When you look into the eyes of a young teen girl like I did, who has experienced her second miscarriage after suffering harrowing labor, you can’t help but be forever changed. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of little girls just like her. We owe it to them to do more. A woman’s right to health should not depend upon where she lives!

-Pam Allen, PA-C

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

US Rep. Betty McCollum visits El Walid School for handicapped children in Ariana, a suburb of Tunisia.

Hello ONE members,

Happy Mother’s Day!

As a mother myself, I understand the importance of making motherhood safe and keeping children alive here at home and around the world. Saving the lives of mothers and children in developing countries must be a top priority for this Congress and the Obama Administration. With 25,000 children dying everyday in poor nations, it is vital we reinvigorate America’s commitment to reducing child mortality and maternal deaths. But to do this effectively, Congress and the administration must develop a robust strategy to reshape our bilateral relationships and redefine our nation’s international assistance investments.

Every year, more than 9 million children under age five die needlessly from preventable or treatable diseases. As many as 6 million of these deaths could be prevented with simple, affordable interventions, including antibiotics, immunizations, bed nets, exclusive breastfeeding, vitamins, good nutrition and clean water.

Every year as least 536,000 women die from pregnancy related causes. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in the developing world.

It is critical for the global community to go further to keep mothers and children in the world’s poorest countries alive and healthy—before, during, and after childbirth.

To renew our country’s leadership through a comprehensive global health strategy, I introduced the Newborn, Child, and Mother Survival Act of 2009 (H.R.1410), along with Congressman Dave Reichert, during International Women’s Day last month. Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D., who chairs Save the Children’s Survive to 5 Campaign, has endorsed my bill. Advocacy groups, including U.S. Coalition for Child Survival, U.S. Fund for UNICEF and the Global Action for Children, have also coalesced around this policy shift to commit to proven, low-cost, highly effective techniques for life-saving interventions, establish a special task force to reduce child mortality and maternal deaths and authorize funding for appropriate health programs in 60 poor countries.

The fact that millions of children are dying every year because they are being born to poor parents in poor countries is shameful. The fact that thousands of women die needlessly from during pregnancy and childbirth is appalling. These deaths are caused from a lack of political will. Now is the time for America to lead the world and make an investment that will save lives, restore our damaged image in the world, and create hope and opportunity across the planet. Or, Congress and the American people can continue to do what we are doing as the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth and let more moms and children die.

The choice is ours.

Congresswoman Betty McCollum (MN-4) is co-founder of the e Congressional Global Health Caucus and serves on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the State Department and Foreign Operations.

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.

Excerpts from Mark Dybul’s post, full piece here:

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.

Excerpts from Sarah Brown’s post, full piece here:

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.

-Margaret McDonnell

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:

Excerpts below, full piece here

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.

Excerpts below, full piece here

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