The Lancet today [Friday 17 May, 2013] publishes a special theme issue ahead of the 2013 Women Deliver conference, to be held May 28 – 30 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Women Deliver brings together voices from around the world to call for action to improve the health and well-being of girls and women, and the latest issue of The Lancet highlights some of the latest research and views on maternal health. Read more...
May 17th, 2013
March 14th, 2013
By: Jill Sheffield, Women Deliver President: Originally posted on BSR
As part of BSR’s celebration of International Women’s Day during the month of March, we asked BSR partners to contribute a guest blog on their experience with women’s empowerment through their lives and work.
My journey as a women’s health advocate began when I worked in the family planning/reproductive health outpatient clinic of Pumwani Maternity Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. I was 27 at the time, and I met a young Kenyan mother, my exact age, who had already been pregnant 11 times but had only six living children. She came to the clinic for contraceptives but was legally barred from obtaining them without her husband’s permission. Read more...
February 11th, 2013
By: Lynn ElHarake, Women Deliver
At the busiest maternity unit at the Lady Willingdon Hospital, a teaching hospital in Lahore, at least one woman every hour gives birth in the unit, often after experiencing complications. Despite the high number of deliveries, the unit was lacking even the most basic guidelines to protect mothers and newborns. That is, until healthcare professionals attended an informative and interactive Jhpiego-led workshop on the postpartum intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD). Read more...
December 6th, 2012
Advocacy organization’s third triennial global conference in May 2013 will draw 5,000 policymakers, researchers and advocates to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
New York, NY, December 6, 2012—Media registration is now open for the Women Deliver 2013 conference, the largest meeting of the decade to focus on the health and empowerment of girls and women. This landmark event expects to draw 5,000 leaders and advocates to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from May 28-30, 2013. The 2013 conference, which will be hosted for the first time in Asia, follows Women Deliver’s historic conferences previously held in London in 2007 and Washington, D.C. in 2010. Read more...
November 16th, 2012
World Prematurity Day highlights effective, low-cost care and new commitments to address the problem
Preterm birth is the world's largest killer of newborn babies, causing more than 1 million deaths each year, yet 75 percent could be saved without expensive, high technology care.
That's the primary message and motivating theme of World Prematurity Day, November 17, a global effort to raise awareness of the deaths and disabilities due to prematurity and the simple, proven, cost-effective measures that could prevent them. Read more...
June 21st, 2012
By: Suzanne Ehlers and Michael Brune; Originally posted on GristBy: Suzanne Ehlers and Michael Brune; Originally posted on Grist
The outcome document for this week’s Rio+20 summit is 49 pages long. Some 23,917 words.
Women were mentioned in less than 0.01 percent of the text. And only two of the 283 sections addressed women’s needs for family planning.
At first, this might not seem like a big deal. It’s easy to think of Rio as a purely environmental conference, dealing with issues related to sustainable development and a green economy. It’s easy to say that Rio is not about “women’s issues.” Read more...
June 21st, 2012
By: Nalini Saligram and Felicia Marie Knaul; Originally posted on Huffington Post
The upcoming Rio+20 Conference (June 20-22, 2012) is a pivotal moment for leaders across the world to come together to find solutions to many of the issues that plague the planet. The conference will focus on important issues core to sustainability, including decent jobs, energy, sustainable cities, food security and sustainable agriculture, water, oceans, and disaster readiness. Read more...
Women and Sustainability: Global Advocates Concerned by Language About Women and Reproductive Rights
June 20th, 2012
By: Women Deliver and Worldwatch Institute
Women Deliver is collaborating with the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project to highlight the important role of women, youth, and sexual and reproductive health and rights in sustainable development at the upcoming Rio+20 conference.
After days of negotiations, world leaders and the over 50,000 participants at Rio+20 will be presented with a draft outcome agreement, known as “The Future We Want.” The draft, which will be finalized on Friday, will be presented to heads of state at the end of the conference and will likely serve as the framework for future goals on economic, social, and environmental sustainability, including the Sustainable Development Goals, which could replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015. Read more...
June 20th, 2012
The Guardian newspaper has announced 16 finalists in the 2012 Guardian International Development Journalism Competition. The competition, which aims to highlight overlooked or underrepresented issues in the developing world, called on contestants to submit a feature piece on an aspect of global poverty deserving of greater attention. Of the hundreds of entries submitted, a long list was narrowed down to 40 contestants, and then short-lists of eight amateur and eight professional writers were finalized. Read more...
June 18th, 2012
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has presented the 2012 Population Award to both Adrienne Germain, and the Federation of Reproductive Health Association Malaysia (FRHAM). The award, which was established in 1981, is given to individuals and institutions that have made outstanding contributions to population concern and their solutions. Read more...
June 6th, 2012
The Global Business Coalition on Health held its conference “Define Forward: Business, Health and the Road Ahead” on May 14-15, bringing together more than 700 corporate executives, government leaders, policy makers, civil society visionaries and media champions to explore the intersection of business and health. GBCHealth featured its first panel on maternal health, entitled “Milestone Moments on the Path to Healthier Motherhood.” Read more...
June 1st, 2012
By: Jill Sheffield, President of Women Deliver
Last month, we received the good news that maternal mortality rates are on the decline – maternal deaths have fallen by nearly 50 percent over the past two decades. With this good news at our heels, we’re excited to announce the opening of registration for the Women Deliver 2013 conference – the largest global conference to focus on the health and empowerment of girls and women of the last 10 years. Read more...
May 29th, 2012
By: Jennifer James; orginally posted at Impatient Optimist
Next month world leaders will converge upon Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from June 20 – 22, for Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (commonly called the “Earth Summit”). Women's groups are pushing to become a major part of the agenda as women continue to be marginalized when it comes to poverty eradication and sustainable development.
The vast majority of the world’s poor are women and children--even twenty years after the first sustainability conference in Rio. It’s one reason why the Women’s Major Group, which includes international sustainable development organizations, is calling for women to share their stories and make their voices heard to ensure women’s issues are not shuffled off the agenda. Read more...
May 24th, 2012
By: Carmen Barroso, International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region; Originally posted on Grist
In just two months, world leaders will gather in Rio to hammer out a new set of agreements on what sustainable development means, and more importantly, how both rich and developing nations can get there before it’s too late. Day by day, the buzz is building around this historic Earth Summit. But there’s a problem: The big plans being hatched for the occasion — nicknamed Rio+20 — leave women out. Read more...
May 22nd, 2012
Affordable, life-saving medicines and health supplies with the potential to save millions of lives are not reaching the children and women who most need them. To help change this, members of the United Nations Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children will today review and finalize recommendations to help increase access, reduce costs, and increase demand for 13 products. Read more...
May 21st, 2012
By: Smita Gaith, Women Deliver
World Pulse, a non-profit global communications network, is sharing a powerful new series called Laboring for Change. As part of the series, they share five stories of five women from different countries who are calling for increased attention and equality in maternal health and reproductive rights. As World Pulse explains, in the United States, advocates for maternal health and reproductive rights have seen a huge wave of recent legislation prohibiting health services, comprehensive sexual education, access to contraception, and abortion. Read more...
May 17th, 2012
This year’s thirteenth annual State of the World’s Mothers report features more than 60 countries and a foreword by USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah. Filled with ground-breaking research, this year’s report focuses on the importance of nutrition during the first 1,000 days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday.
This year’s report also includes their annual Mother’s Index, ranking the best and worst countries in which to be a mother based on health and status indicators for women and children in 165 counties. Norway, as in 2011, ranks first; Niger, replacing Afghanistan in 2011, ranks last. The United States comes in at #25 among the 43 developed countries ranked. Eight of the 10 worst countries to be a mother are in sub-Saharan Africa. We must continue to work to ensure that moms everywhere can care for their kids. Read more...
May 10th, 2012
By: Smita Gaith, Women Deliver
The Nike Foundation continues its commitment to the Girl Effect and the health of girls and women by funding Tostan’s Community Empowerment Programs.
Tostan is an international grassroots organization. The Community Empowerment Program is a community-based effort that makes use of the power of social networks to promote knowledge and skills sharing. The program was created with the intention of targeting the most vulnerable in the country: rural girls and women and embraces a holistic and participatory approach. Read more...
May 2nd, 2012
April 5th, 2012
by Shafia Rashid; Originally posted on The FCI Blog
There is ample evidence illustrating that the health of a woman and her newborn baby are intimately connected. We know that:
- most maternal and newborn deaths are caused by the mother’s poor health before or during pregnancy or due to inadequate care in the critical hours, days, and weeks after birth
- when a woman dies in childbirth, her newborn baby is less likely to survive
Recent research conducted by Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta and colleagues at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan confirms what we already know, and goes one step further: it identifies which maternal and newborn health interventions benefit both mother and newborn. These include: Read more...