Mother's Day Every Day: The White Ribbon Alliance

Photo: Mother's Day Every Day campaign launch. From left: WRA's Susan McCue, Mary Matalin, Rep. Betty McCollum, Rep. Lois Capps, CARE President Dr. Helene Gayle, WRA President Theresa Shaver, Rep. Doris Matsui, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, CARE's JoDee Winterhoff, Ambassador Mark Dybul.

Every minute, another woman dies in childbirth. That's over 500,000 women a year. Mothers. Daughters. Sisters. Wives. Teachers. Farmers. Community builders. In developing nations, pregnancy and childbirth are leading causes of disability and death.

When a woman in a developing country dies in childbirth, all of her children under the age of 10, not just her newborn infant, become 3 to 10 times more likely to die within two years.

Most of the women who die every day in childbirth could be saved with simple, low-cost interventions that would pay for themselves long term by decreasing the need for state aid to motherless children and increasing the economic productivity of developing communities. Just the presence at delivery of a trained childbirth assistant, like a midwife or a nurse, equipped with the most basic cleaning and medical supplies, can mean the difference between life and death for a woman giving birth. Even when complications arise and emergency care is needed, a single tetanus shot, a low-cost dose of antibiotics, or one blood transfusion could be all that is needed to save a new mother's life.

Yet, because of a lack of public awareness about both the magnitude of the problem and the simplicity of the solutions, institutionalized discrimination against women, and poorly managed, inefficient government use of health care funds in developing countries, women around the world continue to die in pregnancy and childbirth at an alarming rate.

The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, a grassroots coalition of individual volunteers and charitable organizations with chapters around the globe, is working to save those women, by raising worldwide public awareness about maternal mortality, improving understanding of ways to prevent injury and death in childbirth in developing communities, and encouraging its members to pressure their own governments to take simple, inexpensive steps to improve women's access to basic health care. Today, WRA and CARE are launching a new campaign called Mother's Day Every Day. 

I recently spoke with White Ribbon Alliance Communications Director Deb Clark about the Alliance's fight to reduce maternal mortality, and their new Mother's Day Every Day initiative.

In the context of the current global economic crisis, Clark notes it is particularly important to pay attention to the role that healthy mothers play in boosting a community's productivity:

"We believe that it is absolutely essential that policy makers recognize that women make it happen, and empowering women is absolutely key to not only the health and wellbeing of their families and their communities, but also to economic development— more broadly, to peaceful sustainability of the world’s people being able to live together on this planet. So that’s why we're so focused and excited about this launch of Mother’s Day Every Day," says Clark.

"It truly is a coming together— that crosses party lines, that crosses ideologies— of people who are saying, today, there is no reason that a woman anywhere should be dying in childbirth for lack of the most basic health care that other women in the world have come to take for granted."

Clark explains that the difference in maternal mortality rates between women in the developed world and women in the developing world really has little to do with difference in lifestyle or economic status— it boils down to basic medical care:

"Fifteen percent of all women—all women who are pregnant—will face during their pregnancy, and their childbirth, life-threatening complications. All women—you me, everywhere—it does not matter where you are in the world—fifteen percent of all of us," Clark says. "Yet, ninety-nine percent of the women who will not survive childbirth live in developing countries, most concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia."

"What is wrong with this picture? I mean, how could that be true? A lot of times, people think, because they’re so poor, there are things that are happening to them that are not happening to us, that aren’t happening to people who are better off. But that’s not true," argues Clark.

"Most of the women who die will die within that window of childbirth, and the following 48 hours. Overwhelmingly, if the woman had quality care, she would survive. Just like overwhelmingly, in this country, and in most places in the world where they have quality care, women survive." 

According to the White Ribbon Alliance's maternal morality fact sheet, in the developing nations where 95 percent of maternal and child deaths occur, it would cost less than $1.50 per person to make significant, permanent improvements in the health care system that would drastically reduce maternal death rates by providing most or all pregnant women in affected regions with basic pre-natal and childbirth care.

So how can you help the White Ribbon Alliance help mothers in the developing world get access to basic, vital pregnancy and childbirth care? 

While WRA is a donor-funded organization run largely by volunteers, the Mother's Day Every Day initiative is not a fundraising drive. Instead, the White Ribbon Alliance hopes the campaign will raise awareness in the United States about the impact worldwide of childbirth-related death and disability, and encourage Americans to discuss the problem publicly, contact their representatives in Congress, and pressure the United States government to focus more on the issue in its dealings with developing countries. The Alliance encourages those who want to help save mothers worldwide to sign up for email alerts on the Mother's Day Every Day website to get information on upcoming events. 

Other posts on Mother's Day Every Day:

PunditMom on BlogHer: Maternal Health Around the World Needs a Shot in the Arm

Donna E. Shalala on HuffPo: U.S. Must Take Leadership to Make Mother's Day Every Day

Comments

[Anonymous]

Who donates to this alliance? Merck and other companies who advocate for birth "interventions"? Where does the alliance get its information? How can it determine that interventions would reduce these deaths when most studies show that the interventions themselves increase risks during childbirth?

[jaelithe]

Anonymous, the stats I quote come from the World Health Organization and the United Nations. And I think you very unfortunately misunderstand the "interventions" being recommended here. There are women in developing countries who do not even have access to a sterile knife with which to cut an umbilical cord. White Ribbon Alliance is trying to give women access to midwives and basic health and sanitation equipment, not major medical interventions.

Incidentally, I was born at home under the supervision of a midwife and a doctor, as were all of my siblings. I myself gave birth to my son in a hospital, but with no medication. I support women who want natural childbirth, but I also support giving all pregnant women access to basic prenatal care, skilled childbirth attendants, and basic safe birthing supplies like clean water and bandages. Don't you?

[anon]

See also http://www.fistulafoundation.org/aboutfistula/

[anon]

Apologies... forgot to include a few more links:

Planned Caesarean Helps Expectant Mother Avoid Another Fistula Injury
www.endfistula.org/newsletter/dispatch_dec2006.pdf

Fistula Network
http://www.fistulanetwork.org/FistulaNetwork/

Childbirth more deadly in poor countries
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/01/16/Childbirth_more_deadly_in_poor_countries/UPI-85711232162110/

[gilda]

http://www.beforethehays.com/the-white-ribbon-alliance-and-life-begins/
Saw this post about the film "Live Begins" (1932) with Loretta Young and it's relation to the "White Ribbon Alliance". Take a look.