As you may know (or if you don’t, here’s a helpful reminder!) Mother’s Day is next Sunday, May 9th. To commemorate the occasion this year, we’re supporting “Six-Word Memoirs” on why moms matter.
Already ONE members across the country have submitted their own six-word memoirs. You can check them out and write your own here. Mothers play such an important role not only in our lives, but in the developing world where healthy mothers are more likely to have healthy children, and educated mothers are 50% more likely to have their children immunized against deadly diseases.
As you likely read on the ONE blog last Friday, last week was a big week for education. Congresswoman Nita Lowey unveiled the Education for All Act of 2010 and Jessica Alba launched the 1GOAL: Education for All campaign.
Save the Children has also been quite busy spreading the word about the importance of education in recent months. In fact, America Ferrera—Save the Children’s Artist Ambassador for Education—recently returned from a trip to Mali, where she talked with teenage girls, played with preschoolers and met with community groups to learn about small ways that people can make a big difference in helping to educate children in Africa.
Learn more about America’s trip in the video diary below:
On 26 April, G8 development ministers will be meeting in Halifax, Canada, to develop an action plan on maternal, newborn and child health. This builds on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s pledge in January that as president of the G8 in 2010, Canada will use this year’s summit to “champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world’s poorest regions.”
For those of us working to fight global poverty, this announcement came as welcome news. Despite improvements in global health in recent years, progress on maternal and child health is still far from where it should be. More than 300,000 mothers still die a year during pregnancy and childbirth and nearly 9 million children die before their 5th birthday.
Yet most of these deaths are the result of preventable and treatable causes. New support for cost-effective, proven interventions could make a dramatic impact on maternal, newborn and child health.
In the past, the G8 has acknowledged the urgent need in maternal and child health along with some of the solutions, but has made few concrete commitments on how it will help African countries make improvements. With Canada’s leadership and public commitment to this issue, 2010 can be the year when the G8 finally takes action.
It’s also an important time for these issues to be highlighted. When African Heads of State meet at the African Union Summit in July they will focus on maternal and child health. In September all global leaders will meet in New York to review progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and with MDGs on maternal and child health being some of the most off-track, a robust plan from the G8 on this issue could galvanise the international community.
Ahead of the meeting of G8 development ministers in Halifax, ONE is outlining its recommendations to the G8. In order to be effective and to make a real difference in the lives of families in the world’s poorest regions, the G8‘s action strategy should:
Be results-oriented – Canada and other G8 countries should commit to an action plan that combines high-impact interventions and long-term investments in local capacity with the ultimate goal of training 1 million health care workers in countries with a high burden of maternal and child deaths. They should work towards universal access to skilled birth attendants, universal access to bed nets, vaccination packages (including pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines) and anti-malarial drugs, and support comprehensive education campaigns about pregnancy to women of child bearing age. Finally, any initiative should have the goal of eliminating mother-to-children transmission of HIV by 2015.
Mobilize new resources – Canada and other G8 countries should double bilateral Overseas Development Assistance to maternal, newborn and child health from approximately USD $4 billion in 2010 to USD $8 billion by 2013. This funding should be channelled through existing bilateral initiatives or new multilateral approaches in the future, such as an expanded Global Fund. In addition, the G8 should commit to full replenishment of multilateral organizations already working to improve maternal and child health such as GAVI (Global Alliance of Vaccines and Immunizations), the Global Fund, the United Nations Population Fund and the World Bank.
Emphasise integration, coordination and country ownership – In addition to new resources, Canada and other G8 countries should also commit to improving the quality and effectiveness of maternal and child health efforts through a commitment to the principles of country ownership, integration and coordination. The G8 and other donors should commit to working with developing countries to devise technically sound national health plans through their internal processes and mechanisms like the International Health Partnership and the private sector to coordinate support and mobilise resources. The G8 should also support and encourage efforts by developing country governments to transparently mobilise domestic resources for improving maternal, newborn and child health and the expansion of affordable access to quality care.
Ensure accountability based on the TRACK principles – Canada and other G8 countries should use this initiative to pilot a robust G8 focus on accountability in line with the accountability matrix and the TRACK principles, which calls for new promises to be Transparent, Results-orients and Accountable, while also articulating any Conditionalities and mapping out a strategy to ensure that will be Kept.
A study published in The Lancet this week reports that maternal mortality has declined significantly for the first time in decades. The study, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and conducted by researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, found that the number of women who died during pregnancy annually fell to an estimated 342,900 (uncertainty interval 302,100—394,300) in 2008 from 526,300 (446,400—629,600) in 1980, representing a 1.3 (1.0—1.5) percent drop in maternal deaths each year since 1990. These findings come after years of no perceived progress.
The divide between these estimates and those reported earlier by the UN (which still estimates around half a million maternal deaths annually, but is expected to release new data later this year), underscores the need for better development statistics and consistent measurement methodologies. When we have accurate statistics, we can effectively target interventions and tailor our approach to priority areas.
Despite the wide uncertainty intervals surrounding the numbers, the message of progress is clear. The study credits a number of factors for the drop in maternal mortality, including lower birth rates, increased educational attainment for women, higher incomes, and better care during delivery.
Six countries were found to account for over half of all maternal deaths: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Additional, targeted efforts are needed in these priority areas.
This study also emphasizes the link between HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health, finding that one in every five maternal deaths in 2008 was related to HIV. In the absence of HIV, annual maternal mortality would have dropped to 281,500 in 2008, supporting arguments for the increased integration of maternal and child survival programs into mechanisms like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Some countries showed an unexpected increase in maternal mortality, partially attributed to better reporting, such as the U.S., Canada and Norway.
These new data should drive accelerated efforts to use proven interventions to save the lives of mothers around the world. The study should also call attention to the importance of better development statistics to target interventions, and the need for those interventions to reflect the integrated nature of health issues on the ground.
In the latest issue of Redbook, Connie Britton sat down for an interview to discuss her recent trip to Africa with ONE and the new initiative Women ONE2ONE.
Here’s a post from our partners at Concern Worldwide looking at the importance of access to quality education—particularly for girls—in Malawi.
Martha is a shy, very intelligent 12 year old girl. This year, she was supposed to earn her primary school leaving certificate (PSLC). Her teachers thought she would certainly make it to high school, as she had been the best student in her class since the first grade.
Bursting with confidence, Martha gave her exam report card to her father. She expected to be showered with praise. But her father passively gazed at the piece of paper and folded it into his pocket.
What Martha didn’t know was that her father had already found a suitor in marriage for her. She would soon be the new housewife of a man old enough to be her grandfather. Despite her excellent academic record, this was her last term in school.
Like Martha, the dreams, hopes and aspirations of many young girls in Nsanje, Malawi have been cut short. In fact in Malawi, approximately 17 percent of girls drop out of school as a result of forced marriages. Poverty and traditional customs allow parents to marry off their daughters when they think they have come of age. Since the suitor pays a bride price, the trend is now that the younger the girl, the higher the bride price.
Despite the prevalence of the problem, few people have come out in the open to criticize these customs. So Concern Worldwide has decided to draft an education program and hold meetings with community leaders and education officials in the Nsanje district to show that educating girls is equally important as educating boys.
The overall goal of Concern’s five-year educational program in Malawi is to improve access to quality education—and to complete the primary education—of 18,736 children (primarily girls and the most vulnerable) in 25 schools. This program is new, but the need is great, and we know that it will transform the lives of thousands of girls just like Martha.
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.
