maternal health

The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), the worldwide professional association of midwives, is holding their first meeting in Africa this week, in Durban, South Africa. The focus is on ensuring the women of the world have safe pregnancies and increased access to medical services.

Norway, where abortion is not politicized, has a better record than the United States with respect to teenage pregnancies and births, but also has a lower abortion rate—a reflection, among other things, of Norwegians’ better access to contraception, its comprehensive sex education policies, and its generally more mature attitude toward human sexuality.

If we can save mothers, we won’t just save their individual lives; we’ll help save their children’s lives, boost their children’s education rates, and maintain and even boost agricultural productivity.

Today, like every day, nearly 1000 women will die giving life; and many of their babies will not survive beyond the first hours and days after birth.

When mothers around the world are supported - by ensuring they have access to family planning - families, communities, and nations flourish.

I am concerned about the lack of coverage for the daily violation of women’s rights that occurs on the labor and delivery unit.

Any cut to Medicaid is a threat to reproductive healthcare.  During this political War on Women, it is not unreasonable to assume that the first thing on the chopping block will be reproductive health services and women’s health care.

The architectural design of two newly built public maternity hospitals in Malawi, which has one of the world’s highest rates of women dying in childbirth, seeks to respect the human rights of birthing women and has had a significant impact on Malawi’s maternal health care system.  Ill-designed government-run maternal health centers litter many poor countries and contribute to unacceptably high maternal death rates. There’s a pressing global need to design public maternity units that uphold the dignity of socially disadvantaged women.

I remember from my own clinic years that when a woman came to our front desk crying and shaking I always knew she had been waylaid by the Fake Clinic directly across the hall.