On the sidelines of the MDGs summit in September, the Secretary General presided over a meeting called "Every Woman, Every Child" which raised $40 billion in pledges for maternal and child health and women's empowerment. Today, the UN announced a new way to make sure that donors actually follow through on their pledges.
Dr. Gayle explains the significance of the commitment and explains why "scaling up" is an important buzz word this week; we also discuss the role of international NGOs like Care in Pakistan flood relief efforts. Have a listen.
Hundreds of world leaders make their annual pilgrimage to New York for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. This is what is on their agenda.
Former super-model Christy Turlington-Burns is a well known advocate for maternal health. She recently channeled her activism into a film that takes a hard look at the global plague of maternal mortality. Her documentary, No Women No Cry debuted at the Tribecca Film Festival in April. Earlier this month, Turlington screened the film at the United Nations for Ban Ki Moon and other diplomats.
By Fabiano Teixeira da Cruz, Inter-American Development Bank
Ed note: Tomorrow, the author will participate in the Women Deliver conference panel ‘Mobilizing Reproductive Health: How Cell Phones Are Revolutionizing Women’s Health’, organized by the mHealth Alliance, which the Rockefeller, UN and Vodafone Foundations launched in 2009 to facilitate cross-sector collaboration to bring mHealth to sustainable scale. These are a preview of her remarks.
Maternal mortality remains a major challenge to health systems worldwide.
The United Nations Population Fund organized a high-level meeting in Istanbul this week, calling attention to the economic benefit of supporting family planning and the rights of women. The meeting focused on the challenges that face Central Asia and Eastern Europe as the countries in the regions try to meet the Millennium Development goals that relate to maternal mortality.
A new article at The Daily Beast highlights the risks of motherhood in India in a striking way. Every year, half a million women die as a result of pregnancy. And for every death, there are 20-30 cases of maternal injury. At the same time, high-end private clinics support surrogate mothers bearing children for infertile couple from the wealthy world. It’s an ugly dichotomy, and it points to financial inequalities and health sector weakness.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute has issued a new report on global abortion rates. They found that while the total number of abortions globally fell from 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003, 20 million unsafe abortions still occur every year. That’s a huge number. These 20 million unsafe abortions kill 70,000 women each year and seriously harm millions more.
A new study by the World Health Organization and the March of Dimes found that one in ten births, globally, is premature. “Around the world, about one in 10 babies are born prematurely each year, and more than one-quarter of the deaths that occur in the month after birth are the consequence of preterm birth.” The data surprised many people; premature birth is often seen as a problem of the wealthy world, and associated with fertility treatments, multiple births, and older mothers.
