Posts Tagged ‘maternal health’

Though many politicians in the U.S. believe that maternal healthcare is unnecessary, maternal healthcare should be universal and guaranteed for every woman.

A new technological platform called Ushahidi could be used to help women in labor experiencing complications all over the world.

When a woman dies during pregnancy, childbirth or due to complications after delivery, it affects not only the family, but also the whole community. These videos, by different human rights organizations, go beyond statistics to tell us the stories of women and their families as they struggle to understand why it is that so many women are dying during childbirth and what needs to be done to stop this.

Pregnant women are still giving birth handcuffed and with their feet shackled. In some places, it is a struggle to ensure human rights for pregnant women. What have been some of the steps made to ensure that they are treated humanely and with respect to the life they carry?

Thank you to Nick Kristof for drawing attention, once again, to the urgent need to end maternal death and life altering pregnancy related complications like obstetric fistula. See July 19th New York Times article, “His Maternal Instinct.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19kristof.html
An estimated two million women are living with fistula in developing countries, with an additional 50,000 to [...]

Typically when women make a little money they invest it in their families (up to 90% by some estimates). When coffers wealthy nations run dry, investment in women’s issue is usually one of the first things to go.
That’s because everybody needs clean water but only women can die in childbirth (currently one every minute). So [...]

In June the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, announced a $20 billion initiative to fund maternal and health survival programs. It sounds like a lot of money and then the sobering qualifier hit – it’s less than the U.S. bailout of any single large bank.
I’m both delighted to have a Secretary General [...]