{"id":2219,"date":"2011-03-08T07:48:20","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T12:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=2219"},"modified":"2011-03-08T07:48:20","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T12:48:20","slug":"global-mama-maternal-health-one-year-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2011\/03\/08\/global-mama-maternal-health-one-year-later\/","title":{"rendered":"GLOBAL MAMA: Maternal Health, One Year Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pro<\/a> Women\u2019s History Month should be a time of celebration.\u00a0 Sadly, when it comes to maternal health, there\u2019s not a lot to celebrate this year.<\/p>\n

Just one year ago, this wasn\u2019t the case. <\/ins>In April 2010, maternal health was making headlines\u2014with an encouraging story.\u00a0 Research published in the medical journal The Lancet<\/em><\/a> found glimmers of hope in the downward direction of the global maternal mortality rate.\u00a0 Though certain parts of the world had experienced rising maternal mortality rates (including eastern and southern Africa, due to HIV-AIDS), the overall picture looked promising. \u00a0These trends were supported by data in another report, Trends in Maternal Mortality<\/em><\/a>, researched and written by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children\u2019s Fun, the United Nations Population Fund, and the World Bank, which found that the number of women who died due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth had decreased by 34% between 1990 and 2008.<\/p>\n

In 2011, the Republican budget in Congress is targeting women\u2019s health programs at home and abroad for deep cuts, with serious consequences for mothers and children.\u00a0 How much money will these proposals actually save, and at what cost to the lives of women and girls?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s revisit recent history.\u00a0 In 2000, world leaders came together at the UN to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which identified eight anti-poverty goals<\/a> to be accomplished by 2015.\u00a0 The fifth goal was maternal health<\/a>: to reduce by 75% the maternal mortality rate, and to achieve universal access to reproductive health.\u00a0 In 2010, while much work remained to be done, the data suggested that most maternal deaths can be prevented, and that the safe motherhood<\/a> movement was truly making an impact.\u00a0 Celebratory headlines in newspapers like the one in The New York Times<\/em> declared \u201cMaternal Deaths Decline Sharply Across the Globe<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 This article quoted The Lancet<\/em>\u2019s editor, Dr. Horton, explaining that the data should \u201cencourage politicians to spend more on pregnancy-related health matters\u201d:<\/p>\n

The data dispelled the belief that the statistics had been stuck in one dismal place for decades, he said. \u00a0So money allocated to women\u2019s health is actually accomplishing something, he said, and governments are not throwing good money after bad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the same time, U.S. activists were becoming increasingly alarmed at rising domestic death rates.\u00a0 Amnesty International issued a report, Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the U.S.A.<\/em><\/a>, that raised concerns about the two-decade upward trend in the numbers of preventable maternal deaths.\u00a0 Amnesty International observed that \u201cwomen in the USA have a higher risk of dying of pregnancy-related complications than those in 49 other countries, including Kuwait, Bulgaria, and South Korea\u201d and called for a legislative agenda that made maternal health a priority.<\/p>\n

Who could have guessed that one year later, we would be retreating even further from making maternal health a priority?<\/p>\n

Most of us know about the proposed cuts to Planned Parenthood, which provides a wide array of sexual and reproductive health services to women, many of whom cannot afford to go elsewhere. \u00a0Proposed slashes in funding to global women\u2019s health are just as serious.\u00a0 Ms.<\/em><\/a> blogger Anushay Hossain explains what\u2019s on the chopping block globally, and why this is such a big deal:<\/p>\n

House Republicans not only proposed to cut<\/a> U.S. assistance to international family planning funding, they also want to completely zero out\u00a0any funds going to the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, the largest multilateral source of reproductive-health <\/strong>assistance in the world. The U.S. currently provides 22 percent<\/a> of the UN\u2019s overall budget, and UNFPA is the only agency within the UN that focuses on reproductive health.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the recently concluded 55th<\/sup> Session of the Commission on the Status of Women<\/a>, the new Executive Director of UNFPA, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, listed the three main challenges<\/a> we must face in order to improve maternal health globally: empowering women and girls to claim their rights, \u201cincluding the right to sexual and reproductive health\u201d; strengthening health services everywhere \u201cto deliver an integrated package of sexual and reproductive health services\u201d; and ensuring \u201cadequate financing.\u201d\u00a0 He also spoke about girls\u2019 education as \u201cthe most important intervention to avoid maternal deaths.\u201d\u00a0 I was inspired to read UNFPA\u2019s mission<\/a>, which reflects an understanding of health in the context of human rights and equality:<\/p>\n

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. \u00a0UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV\/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This struck me as fairly comprehensive and visionary. \u00a0Yet I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen this picture of UNFPA in the mainstream U.S. media.\u00a0 Nor have I seen the following question asked\u2014or answered: how might the proposed cuts affect maternal mortality rates, at home and globally? \u00a0I would also like to see politicians address this issue.\u00a0 I was glad to see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton detail the devastating effects of the elimination of funding to UNFPA; her testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Relations is posted on Feministing<\/a>.\u00a0 She observed that the quality of women\u2019s health and empowerment in the developing world not only has an effect on their families and their communities, but also on our own security: \u201cThis is not just what we fail now to do for others.\u00a0 It\u2019s how that will come back and affect our own health here at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

As one of the truisms of globalization goes, we\u2019re all connected.\u00a0 Indeed\u2014the security of women everywhere appears to be threatened by the proposed cuts and policies in the U.S. Congress.<\/p>\n

Happy International Women\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

Image via Wikipedia Commons.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women\u2019s History Month should be a time of celebration.\u00a0 Sadly, when it comes to maternal health, there\u2019s not a lot to celebrate this year. Just one year ago, this wasn\u2019t the case. In April 2010, maternal health was making headlines\u2014with an encouraging story.\u00a0 Research published in the medical journal The Lancet found glimmers of hope […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1916,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21105],"tags":[21395,1399,33,3109],"class_list":["post-2219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-mama","tag-girls","tag-global","tag-health","tag-motherhood"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}