Ann Starrs
Ann M. Starrs, Executive Vice President, Family Care International
Ann is responsible for overall program development, strategic planning, and administration at FCI. FCI's mission is to improve women's sexual and reproductive health and rights in developing countries, with a special emphasis on making pregnancy and childbirth safer. Ann has been part of FCI since its founding in 1986, helping to establish the organization and launching its in-country activities in Eastern and Southern Africa while based in Uganda. From 1992-1996 she directed FCI's Africa program, before stepping into the role of vice president. As vice president, she was integrally involved in FCI's work as the secretariat for the Safe Motherhood Inter-Agency Group, a role the organization fulfilled from 1987 to 2004. She currently serves as co-chair of the Steering Committee of the global Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.
More Midwives Save Lives
by Ann Starrs, Family Care International
December 15, 2006 - 11:00am (Print)
Ann M. Starrs is Executive Vice President for Family Care International.
Five weeks ago, some 8-10,000 of the world's obstetrician-gynecologists met in Kuala Lumpur for their triennial Congress. While the meeting paid more attention to the problem of maternal mortality and morbidity in the developing world than it ever has in the past, the fact is that much of the conference proceedings were about new technologies, innovative techniques, and drugs under development - many of which will have no impact whatsoever on the health of 95% of the pregnant women of the world, because they are unaffordable and inaccessible to those women.
This week, in Tunisia, about 100 maternal health advocates, health care professionals, and program planners met to talk about an approach that could have a tremendous impact on women's ability to go through pregnancy and childbirth safely, if it can generate the policy commitment, strategic thinking, and funding it needs and deserves: how to train, deploy, and support midwives in or close to the communities where women are living - and dying.
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