Saving Lives this Mother’s Day

Commentary by CEDPA President Yolonda C. Richardson

May 11, 2006—While honoring our mothers this Mother’s Day, May 14, I hope you will join me in renewing our commitment to making motherhood safer for all women and their families worldwide.

In the United States, many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers died giving birth to their fourth or fifth or even tenth child 75 years ago. In 1930, the U.S. was mainly rural, and many women had to rely on their neighbors as birth attendants. The sole country doctor usually lived miles away, and it may have taken hours if not days to get to a woman in critical need of care.

Today, though one out of three U.S. women will likely experience a major medical complication during their pregnancy, many will be able to access the medical care they need.

But the sad fact remains that health risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth continue to claim over 500,000 mother’s lives each year, mostly in Africa and Asia. With limited access to family planning and maternal health care, and the lack of emergency obstetric care, many women in developing countries today face great risks in pregnancy.

The solutions are close by. For 30 years, CEDPA has helped raise awareness about maternal health risks and mobilize actions to make pregnancy and childbirth safer for all women:

• In Nepal, where sixty percent of girls are married by age 18, a higher percentage of women die in pregnancy and childbirth than anywhere else in South Asia. CEDPA works with the Nepal Red Cross Society to bring reproductive health services closer to rural women, who are least likely to access maternal care.
• We’ve mobilized hundreds of women’s groups in Senegal to organize blood drives across the country in an effort to reduce maternal deaths due to the lack of blood supplies to treat hemorrhages.
• In Nigeria, where eight out of every 1,000 women die due to maternal health complications, we’ve joined with religious leaders to increase support for and access to lifesaving reproductive health services.
• For over a decade, CEDPA has reached more than 77,000 adolescent girls in Egypt through the New Horizons education programs to improve their knowledge of reproductive health and build basic life skills.

In 1999, CEDPA helped found White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood in India. To date, the coalition’s grassroots and media campaigns have reached hundreds of millions throughout India with messages on preventing maternal deaths.

Just last month, the alliance and its partners held a national policy forum on India’s Safe Motherhood Day to encourage elected officials to make motherhood safer there. The event publicized the high rate of maternal death in India, which has the highest number of maternal deaths of any country in the world. It offered suggested policy actions, including legislation and greater public outreach to improve maternal health.

The White Ribbon Alliance of India also just released two new guidelines for health practitioners to improve delivery and newborn care, and manage common obstetric complications.

Working hand-in-hand with our local partners, CEDPA’s programs have made safe motherhood a community priority in the areas where we’ve worked. More women in Nigeria now know of several danger signs to watch for when pregnant and when to access emergency care. Unassisted deliveries have decreased in areas of India where we’ve worked.

And, Nepalese women who have participated in community action groups increased their use of contraceptives to space pregnancies to healthier intervals.

CEDPA continues to develop new and creative approaches that make quality maternal health services accessible to more women throughout the world. But more mobilization and advocacy efforts are needed.

Our hope is that in the coming years, no woman will die because she did not have access to the information and services to protect her life and that of her child.

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