MAJOR new commitments to invest in women’s health have been made at a meeting in London designed to step up action in the fight against pregnancy-related deaths and disabilities.
The Women Delivery conference, marking the 20th anniversary of the Safe Motherhood Initiative launched in Kenya, saw 1,800 participants from 109 countries, including 70 cabinet ministers and parliamentarians, promising to make the fifth Millennium Development Goal “a high priority on the national, regional and international health agenda”. They also pledged to be advocates in their home countries for “increased commitment of financial and human resources” against maternal mortality and to accelerate the expansion of services for maternal and newborn health.
The meeting took place amongst growing concern that the maternal health goal may not he achieved. The UN target is to reduce maternal mortality by 75% between 1990 and
2015.
“We know what to do to stop these needless deaths, it just is’nt happening fast enough,” said Jill Sheffield, director of Family Care International. “A woman dies needlessly every minute of every day simply related to her being pregnant. That is about the same rate as it was 20 years ago in 1987. This is outrageous, it is unacceptable, and we are not going to have this anymore.”
During the past 20 years, 20 million women have died of avoidable complications such as high blood pressure or excessive bleeding during childbirth.
Often the baby dies too or, without a mother, does not survive the next few years. As well as this, tens of thousands of pregnant women die in back-street abortions in countries where contraceptives are not readily available and abortion is heavily restricted or banned. Majority of the more than one half million maternal deaths in 2005 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Though the problem is worse in poor countries, there are disparities between the rich and poor in all countries. One in seven Afghan women will die during pregnancy, one in 2,500 in the United States and one in 30,000 in Sweden.
Announcing a $200 million UK grant to the United Nations Population Fund to advance women’s reproductive health worldwide. Britain’s Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander, called for leaders of the world’s poorest countries to make sure that health services reflect the needs of women.
“To improve women’s health we must improve their rights, the right to education, the right to freedom from the threat of violence, and the right to make informed choices about their health and about their families’ health” He added: “That means women designing the services that they also use, women contributing to the political agenda and indeed setting the agenda and leading the agenda.”
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