Maternal and Child Health

Why women and girls are the secret weapon in ending poverty

Mar 8th, 2013 9:14 AM UTC
By Helen Hector

To celebrate International Women’s Day we’ve picked some of our favourite images and matched them up with facts to show why investing in women and girls is so important here at ONE. 

Pupils at Kidoti Primary School in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Photo: Morgana Wingward / ONE.

Women farmers growing sweet potatoes in Tanzania. Photo: ONE.

An employee picking roses at Golden Rose Agrofarms in Ethiopia, where 85% of the workers are young women who have never had a job before. Photo: Morgana Wingward / ONE.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf meets with ONE representatives at the Foreign Ministry in Monrovia. Photo: Morgana Wingward / ONE.

A mother and her baby at a breastfeeding clinic in Ghana. Photo: ONE

Join us in celebrating International Women’s Day by sharing this post with your friends and family.

And make sure you tell the women and girls in your life that they are awesome.

Sources
Education: United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990; UNESCO Education Statistics; UNICEF, Millennium Development Goals: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

Agriculture: IFAD (2001) Assessment of Rural Poverty: Western and Central Africa; The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Girls Grow: A Vital Force in Rural Economies; USAID, Women in Development: Country Snapshot: Kenya and Agriculture & Micro-enterprise

Employment: Phil Borges (2007) Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World. New York;   World Bank (2008) Doing Business: Women in Africa; United Nations Development Programme

Politics: D. Dollar, R. Fisman and R. Gatti, Are Women Really the ‘Fairer’ Sex? Corruption and Women in Government, Policy Research Report on Gender and Development Working Paper Series No. 4; Africa Progress Report (2012) Jobs, Justice and Equity – Seizing Opportunities in Times of Global Change

Health:UNICEF (2009) State of the World’s Children: Maternal and Newborn Health; UNAIDS (2012) Together We Will End AIDS; WHO (2012) Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2010

The coolest new vlog that’s keeping Africa real

Feb 26th, 2013 2:25 PM UTC
By Helen Hector

Did you know that the Harlem Shake evolved from an Ethiopian dance called the Eskista? Or that Botswana has a thriving heavy metal scene? No? Then you need What’s Up Africa.

Ikenna Azuike’s weekly video blog takes a cheeky look at what’s happening across the continent and mashes it up with music, video and internet memes that entertains as much as it enlightens.

Here’s his latest post which includes his thoughts on a possible Ghanaian Pope (with a dubstep twist) plus a new maternal health tv channel that’s getting life saving information out to people in an innovative way.

ONE have been lucky enough to grab an interview with Ikenna, where he reveals, “I’m trying to represent an accurate picture of the continent, a more balanced picture than the one that Western media portrays. There are a lot of young Africans that are frustrated by that and so I hope they feel like there is someone out there trying to correct that.

I used to be a lawyer and it was interesting and challenging and all that good stuff and it paid really well, but it wasn’t fulfilling. And now I feel like I am doing something relevant that matters because people are surprised by the blogs and the stuff that I highlight.”

Watch the latest video blog on What’s Up Africa every Monday, and check out our full interview with Ikenna over on the US blog.

Ten things you need to know about European aid (but won’t find in the Sunday Telegraph)

Sep 24th, 2012 5:42 PM UTC
By Adrian Lovett

UK media reports over the weekend were critical of UK aid money that is spent via Europe. But in the stories many facts about EU aid have been overlooked. At ONE we fight for smart aid to help the poorest people lift themselves out of extreme poverty. Aid from the European Union is increasingly just that. More and more of it is smart aid that saves lives and we should protect it.

So to correct some of the myths, here my top ten facts about EU aid and the reasons we need to support it:

1. In the six years to 2009, EU aid gave more than nine million children a primary education, more than 31 million people access to safe drinking water and  vaccinated more than 5 million children against measles
2. Bill Gates says “The EU is the most influential aid donor in the world” and “EU generosity has literally helped save millions and millions of lives.”
3. Contrary to reports the EU does not give development aid to Iceland. Iceland receives money from a specific fund designed to assist with the costs of preparing for EU membership. This is nothing to do with EU aid to fight poverty.
4. EU aid is focusing on the poorest people and countries. Governments of China, Brazil and India will no longer receive development aid from the EU from 2014 and the list of countries eligible for the EU’s Development Cooperation Instrument has been cut from 48 to 29 so that EU aid will become even more focused on the poorest countries in the years ahead.
5. The UK ranks the European Commission among the world’s top development and humanitarian aid donors. The UK’s Multilateral Aid Review rated the European Development Fund, the key EU aid instrument, as ‘critical to UK development objectives’.
6. An independent study by Publish What You Fund ranked the part of the EU that delivers aid to the poorest, one of the top ten most transparent donors in the world. It came ninth out of 58 institutions.
7. Giving some of our aid through the EU means we can coordinate aid with other countries to avoid overlap, save money on delivery, and reach countries that we otherwise couldn’t.
8. Eritrea is the fifth poorest country in the world but not a focus of direct aid from the UK, France or Germany. Here EU aid supports agriculture so communities can cope with droughts and avoid famine, and it build roads so people can get their goods to market, building businesses and helping people lift themselves out of poverty.
9. At the UK Hunger Summit during the Olympics the European Union pledged to use its aid to help save 7 million children from stunting (caused by malnutrition) by 2025.
10. If protected the EU aid budget could help over 51 million people have access to clean water, get over 15 million children into primary school and vaccinate 8.3 million children by 2020.

We’re not saying everything in the world of aid is perfect, nor that aid is all that’s needed to overcome poverty.  And we also know there are lots of views about how big the EU should be, how big its total budget should be and so on. That debate is not for us.  Our argument is simple: aid from Europe is good and getting better.  It’s a tiny proportion of total spending.  It’s helping save lives. It should be protected.

African Women as Drivers of Development

Sep 17th, 2012 11:58 AM UTC
By Katherine Lay

“We need to ensure that the energy, skills, strength, values and wisdom of women become an integral part of the remodeled economic infrastructures now being developed by global leaders. Empowering and investing in women is part of a global solution for us all, now and in the future.”

Graça Machel, African Elder and Activist
Former First Lady of Mozambique and South Africa

Women are a formidable economic force across emerging markets in Africa, yet their role in economic production remains largely unrecognized. Their continued inability to access and control economic and social capital assets and resources has been a central factor in perpetuating Africa’s poverty trap and in keeping the economic performance of many African states below their potential.

Creating a climate of success for women in Africa is not simply smart economics, it is integral to the continent’s development effectiveness, referenced by a direct correlation between women’s empowerment, national GDP growth, private sector growth, environmental sustainability and improved health outcomes. The implications for human development are vast, but remain unharnessed. Instead, marginalization of women as economic actors is compromising a continent poised for a massive economic boom.

Women’s disempowerment is particularly glaring in Africa’s agricultural sector. Women are Africa’s principal food producers: according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, they make up 70 percent of the agricultural labor force and are responsible for 80 percent of food production and 60 to 90 percent of marketing, in addition to grueling household responsibilities. Any genuine effort to eradicate poverty and hunger in Africa must therefore confront the fact that more than half of the producers of the agricultural sector – a sector that can have twice the impact on poverty reduction as growth in other sectors – are operating from a distinct disadvantage. Women are contending with policies and practices that severely restrain their agricultural production potential and are facing widespread restrictions on their ability to buy, sell or inherit land, utilize banking services, or access rudimentary resources and markets.

In Uganda, for example, women receive only 9 per cent of agricultural credit, while in Malawi only 7 per cent of female-headed households receive extension support, compared to 13 per cent for male-headed households. In Kenya, women produce 80 percent of the country’s food and manage more than one-third of smallholder farms, yet receive less than 10 percent of credit provided for smallholders and own less than 10 percent of the land. As a result, women cannot maximize profits, reinvest them or secure capital to expand their investments.

It is clear that ongoing failure to invest in women farmers is handicapping the continent’s quest for more productive and sustainable agriculture systems and more food secure and prosperous societies. Success will lie in the removal of restrictive laws and in agriculture policies and budgets that are responsive to the needs of local women farmers, empowering them to produce more food for local markets as a solid foundation for global food security.

Investing in women’s economic empowerment is a high-yield investment, with multiplier effects on productivity, efficiency and inclusive growth for the continent. This context presents a key opportunity for governments and business leaders to recognize and encourage women to be participants, beneficiaries and enablers of Africa’s growth. Even where supportive policies are established, implementation and practice will only succeed if all leaders send clear messages that the economic participation of women is fundamental to Africa’s future success.

African Voices: Kadiatu Blango

Sep 10th, 2012 4:38 PM UTC
By Guest Blogger

This post by Kadiatu Blango was kindly provided by Restless Development

My name is Kadiatu, I am 20 and have two daughters. I had my second child when I was 18. Like every mother, I want the very best for my children and do everything I can for them, but I worry that it will be difficult for them, just like it was for me.

Kadiatu and her two daughters in their community

My father died when I was very young and I was only able to go to school up until the age of six. I left my mother’s home to go and live with my uncle, but he was hardly ever around. His wife, my aunt, did not care for me as she did her own children and we did not get on. I was forced to carry out domestic chores while her children were able to attend school.

As the war became more intense, we moved to Freetown. Upon my return to the village my mother forced me to be initiated into the bondo society, a group that practices female genital cutting. I did not want to. I wanted to go to school.

My mother told me that she couldn’t afford to pay my school fees, and yet she could afford to spend a lot of money on the initiation process. Once initiated, I was forced into marriage at the age of 12 and became pregnant the same year. The baby’s father left when I was six months pregnant. I haven’t seen him since. I suffered a lot to raise the baby with no support from my mother or any other relative. Selling wood, potato and cassava leaves were the main sources of income for myself and my child.

There was no way I could continue with schooling without parental support. Later, I met another guy who fooled around with me and made me believe he could handle my problems. He started well, but then he got me pregnant and ran away to Liberia. I got my second child at the age of 18. Life is very hard and quite challenging for us coming from a very poor family but we all do our best.

It should not be like this for me and nor for my two daughters. I want them to be free to get an education, and to not be worried about marrying too young or experiencing violence. I want them to grow up to be strong young women who can make their own choices, go to school, own land and control their own lives.

Kadiatu Blango outlines a few answers to questions from Restless Development:

What challenges do women face in your community?

The main challenges faced by women are numerous to name but a few are:

• Sexual assault and harassment
• Teenage pregnancy
• Gender Based Violence
• Parental or family support
• Finances to help support them on their day to day activities
• Access to land for farming and agricultural activities

How does your family make a living?

• Through selling local condiments like potato and cassava leaves and sometimes selling firewood to make up our living on daily basis

What opportunities would you like to see for your kids?

• To be children of substance and contribute meaningful to the development of my country
• Government, CSOs, INGO and CBOs to put modalities in place to address burning issues that are affecting young girls like us bearing children
• Provide quality information to help informed us our the dangers early marriage and teenage pregnancy

What would you like to see leaders promise to do to help communities like yours?

• To tackle issues on poverty
• Teenage pregnancy and early marriage
• HIV & AIDS
• Standardized free medical health services for all children and women not only the specified category in the free medical scheme zero to five years but even those above ten.
• Improved agricultural activities and revised land tenure systems for our community for suckling mothers to have easy access to backyard farming
• Microfinance opportunities for women

What would you like world leaders to focus on that would have impact on your life?

• To tackle issues on poverty
• Teenage pregnancy and early marriage
• HIV & AIDS
• Agriculture
• Free Education for girls at all levels
• Corruption
• Youth employment

Background information

Underlying these points are high rates of teenage pregnancy. About 34 percent of women aged 15 to 19 have either already had a baby or are pregnant. This also often leads to interrupted education, reduced earning potential, poor marital outcomes and reduced health outcomes for surviving children.

Furthermore, youth unemployment is a major problem in Sierra Leone, with an estimated one-third of urban and one-sixth of rural 20- to 24-year-olds out of work, and more than 17 percent of the urban populations aged 15 to 35 years unemployed. Work opportunities are rare (around 9 percent of the workforce are formally employed), which means that stories like Kadiatu’s are mainly the norm rather than the exception.

Featuring contributions from African citizens who are living in communities affected by extreme poverty, ONE’s African Voices series will follow their progress to give a better understanding of the day-to-day challenges they face and also to track changes that occur over time. Find out more at one.org/africanvoices.

Restless Development is an agency that places young people at the forefront of change and development. It works in Africa and Asia to empower young people to take their lives into their own hand and trains, educates and inspires young people to be part of the solution. Find out more at www.restlessdevelopment.org

The simplest way to find out what the world’s poorest want is to ask them

May 10th, 2012 11:09 AM UTC
By Katherine Sladden

The UN has announced that Prime Minister David Cameron, President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will co-chair a UN High Level Panel to advise the United Nations on global development beyond 2015 – the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were set in 2000 to significantly reduce global poverty and disease.

These leaders have an important job to do – they will need to help ensure that the existing MDGs are met as far as possible – a important job we must all stay focused on – and then set the agenda for what happens next.

Responding to the announcement, Michael Elliott, President and CEO of ONE, said:

“We congratulate the three leaders who have been chosen to lead the High Level Panel, all of whom are well qualified for the task ahead.

“We want to see the panel members adopt two important principles. First, to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals are met as far as possible by 2015. It would be a travesty to set out new goals before we have done everything possible to reach the ones now in place. Second, to guarantee that the voices of the poorest are heard and acted upon in deciding what comes next. The simplest way to find out what the world’s poor want and need is to ask them, and the panel’s first item of business should be to undertake a genuine process of wide-ranging consultation to that end.

“Meanwhile, we should remember that we still have 1330 days to go before the end of 2015. During that time, governments and civil society must make a determined final push to halve global poverty and disease. Over the next three years, that will remain a primary focus of ONE and our 3 million supporters around the globe.”

Adrian Lovett, Europe Executive Director of ONE, added:

“This appointment is a recognition of David Cameron’s strong record on international development. He has demonstrated his commitment to the fight against extreme poverty and has backed his words with action.

“The Prime Minister must now take on the responsibility of global leadership. He has the chance to help set the world on a credible path towards ending extreme poverty and hunger. But to succeed, he will need to make this is a top priority in his negotiations with other leaders, in his UN role and as chair of next year’s G8.”

You can find out more about the MDGs here.

Building a strategy to ensure no child born with HIV

Jun 15th, 2011 9:53 AM UTC
By Brooke Riley

At the recent UN High Level Meeting on AIDS, world leaders made a critical step in the right direction with the launch of a global plan to eliminate new HIV infections among children by 2015 and to keep their mothers alive. Last year, ONE members tirelessly advocated for the Global Fund during our “No Child Born with HIV” campaign, and we’re pleased that this plan will help us work towards turning that goal into reality.

Tremendous gains have been made in recent years in reducing HIV infections among children and scaling up the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV, yet much work remains. In 2009, an estimated 370,000 new infections occurred among children, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. The global strategy identifies two top goals: to reduce the number of new infections among children by 90 percent and reduce the number of AIDS-related maternal deaths by 50 percent. Under the plan, resources will be channelled to 22 priority countries, where nearly all HIV-positive pregnant women live.

The global plan identifies a four-prong framework for achieving these goals: preventing HIV among women of reproductive age through services related to reproductive health such as postpartum care; providing appropriate counselling and support to women living with HIV; ensuring HIV testing, counselling and access to treatment for pregnant women living with HIV; and HIV care, treatment and support for women and children living with HIV and their families.

We’re pleased to see that the global plan puts accountability at the helm and recognizes the critical importance of an integrated approach that connects an array of maternal and child health services across the health system. Additionally, the plan identifies the need for countries to be at the lead by providing political leadership, funding, effective strategies and strong monitoring and evaluation. While we applaud the effort to create this strategy, a plan is only so strong in so far as it has concerted political support and funding. Moving forward, if we hope to ensure no child is born with HIV by 2015, we need to see the following:

A reason to celebrate this Mother’s Day

Apr 3rd, 2011 11:00 AM UTC
By Melinda French Gates

As Mother’s Day is marked in the UK, Melinda Gates explains why we have an extra reason to celebrate.

Mother’s Day is usually a joyous occasion—and this year we have even more reason to celebrate. Mothers and their children are surviving today at higher rates than at any other point in history.  In fact, just since 1990, the number of children who die before their fifth birthday has declined from more than 12 million per year to slightly over 8 million.

I feel fortunate because I get to see this progress firsthand. On a recent trip to Nairobi, I spoke with a group of women about their children.  One mother told me, “I want to bring every good thing to one before I have another.” It reinforced what I always hear on my trips to different countries around the globe—that mothers everywhere have the same goal for our children, a successful future.

So, what’s behind this success? Over the past decade, innovators around the world have developed new tools and technologies– vaccines, drugs, and bednets to name a few—which have been integral in saving millions of lives.

But the innovation driving this success is not just limited to these stunning breakthroughs in science, in technology; it can be creative without being high-tech. I’m talking about pioneering ways of changing behavior, working with communities and sharing these new ideas with women in the poorest areas of the world.

Take breastfeeding, for example. Simply put, breastfeeding is a life-saving act. We know exclusive breastfeeding – when the newborn is fed only with breast milk and nothing else in the first six months – is one of the best ways to save baby’s lives.

When I was in Dowa, Malawi last year I visited the Dowa District Hospital. Exclusive breastfeeding is a core project of the government, one supported by Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives Program.  The initiative encourages women to give birth in a health clinic and then provides them with three home visits from healthcare workers, in the weeks following the birth. These visits help mothers learn about how to care for their children, including exclusively breastfeeding.  Programs like these aren’t created in a laboratory, yet help mothers realize they can significantly improve the health of their newborns without any new technologies.

The British government and citizens have been true leaders around these types of health innovations for women and children.  I had the pleasure of meeting with Andrew Mitchell recently and was impressed with his remarkable passion. I’ve met with a lot of ministers over the years, but I don’t often see the dedication like that of Minister Mitchell.  It’s also truly amazing to see the way Britain has stood by its international commitments on foreign aid in the midst of the current global financial crisis.

Investing in the health of women and children is the right thing to do.  If we keep innovating, we’ll make faster and faster progress and achieve more with our investments.  We’ll save the lives of mothers and their children in even greater numbers.  And we’ll help make sure that motherhood is always a joy, for every mother, everywhere.

I can’t imagine a better way to celebrate Mother’s Day.

This post was first published on the UK Department for International Development (DFID) blog

Our take on Ban’s new Global Strategy

Sep 25th, 2010 11:27 AM UTC
By Erin Hohlfelder

Initiatives worth $40 billion don’t often go unnoticed, so you may have seen that on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health (PDF), a plan designed to accelerate progress toward Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 by galvanizing global commitments around a comprehensive plan. The Secretary-General’s office announced that the commitments made so far will:

How do you prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV?

Sep 17th, 2010 5:01 PM UTC
By Erin Hohlfelder

From online petitions to angry baby protests, it’s hard to miss ONE’s focus on the Global Fund and our goal to ensure that virtually no child is born with HIV by 2015. But throughout this campaign, many of you have rightfully asked, “How does this exactly work?”

It’s a miracle of modern medical technology that we’re able to prevent the mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT).

An HIV-positive mother can pass HIV on to her baby any time during pregnancy, labor, delivery and breastfeeding, so the transmission of the virus must be blocked at each stage. The 2010 World Health Organization guidelines recommend that HIV-positive pregnant mothers should go on a regimen of three antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) as soon as possible — and stay on these drugs until their infant is born and breastfeeding has concluded.

As soon as the infant is born, the baby should take nevirapine — a very inexpensive drug — daily for six weeks. The infant should be formula-fed rather than breastfed if possible, but it’s recognized that formula feeding is both expensive and difficult to do safely in resource-limited settings, so the mother is recommended to breastfeed her child exclusively for six months while continuing to take ARVs. In a recent study conducted by Harvard University in Botswana, mothers who adhered to this regimen reduced transmission of HIV to their babies by an amazing 99 percent.

These prevention guidelines have evolved over the years as scientists have learned more about how to most effectively reduce the risk of transmission while also working to minimize drug resistance for our most effective treatment tools. Many policymakers stress that access to effective contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies is also important for women who are HIV-positive.

For more details on the PMTCT process, including a chart that maps which drugs are used when and in what settings, visit AVERT’s handy guide. Also, be sure to check out WHO’s global strategic vision for 2015.