Action Alert: Pregnant Women & Unborn Babies in Haiti

Pregnant women and their babies are highly vulnerable to death and injury in disaster situations. Please give to Americans for UNFPA in its work to aid the pregnant women and babies of Haiti.

Send a Safe Birthing Kit for $8

(crossposted at Marysia's RHReality Check diary)

If you have access to the Internet, chances are that even with the
global economic downturn, you are still, wherever you may live, prosperous compared to the average person and family in the Two-Thirds World.

Are you still able to spare $8? UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, will send on your behalf a birthing kit to help protect and save the lives of one mother and one baby in a materially poor country.

(Note: UMCOR's relief work is something that I suspect people of all faiths and none could support--not all Christians use relief work as a pretense for prostelytizing by a long shot--but please check this out for yourself.)

Maternal and child mortality are interconnected global scourges. They are directly caused by the inhumane failure to make widely available even low-tech, inexpensive solutions like birthing kits or oral rehydration therapy to those who most desperately need them.

As UNFPA insists,"No Woman Should Die Giving Birth." Please visit this UNFPA site if you want to learn more about this unnecessary, preventable global injustice--and please be the solution for one mother and one baby through UMCOR.

Large institutional changes in health care are necessary to solve the problem on
a massive scale, but individuals and families in the present cry out for direct and immediate help, too.

Surely this is an area where prolife and prochoice can and should cooperate.

Towards Zero Preventable Child Deaths

A report from the United States Fund for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, presents some very welcome news about already-born children's mortality. Since 1960, the global death rate of children under five has decreased by 60 percent.

In an email announcing the report, US Fund for UNICEF head Caryl Stern says this is reason to redouble systematic lifesaving efforts for the 25,000 children who are still lost worldwide every day. "These children are dying for reasons we can prevent. They do not have to die, but they do. I believe that number should be zero."

To support UNICEF's efforts "towards zero," please visit the US Fund's Donate by Program page.

In a post from January 23, 2008, this blog noted that both global child mortality and abortion rates were declining.

Could it be that measures which benefit already-born kids simultaneously benefit unborn children, and vice versa--contrary to the either/or, zero sum thinking of the US abortion debate and its exports?

And what if the approach of striving for zero preventable child deaths were applied more systematically to abortion and its root causes?

Incidentally, such an approach already meshes quite well with with global efforts to reduce maternal mortality.

End "This Shameful Neglect" With the White Ribbon Alliance

Please endorse this plea for life just in from the White Ribbon Alliance. Thank you.

Dear Friend,

Tell the Global Leaders

... every woman has the right to health care in pregnancy and childbirth.

In September, the global leaders will attend an emergency United Nations meeting in New York on the Millennium Development Goals - the 8 goals world leaders set in 2000 to tackle poverty and global inequities.

Yet Millennium Development Goal 5, to reduce maternal deaths by 75% by the year 2015, is the one Goal on which virtually no progress has been made so far. Despite recent commitments by the African Union and the European Union to set milestones for skilled birth attendants and family planning, world leaders lack the political will to take decisive steps to reverse the trend of declining investment in maternal health. It is time to make our voices heard so that this shameful neglect of women and their newborns comes to an end.

It will take you two minutes to sign this letter - and in that time two women around the world will lose their lives during pregnancy or childbirth because they don't have access to basic health services. This action will demonstrate to the global leaders that the public will no longer accept this injustice.

http://www.whiteribbonalliance.org/takeaction

We are aiming to collect at least 500,000 signatures to represent the 500,000 women who die during pregnancy or childbirth each year -- we need your help! Please spread this message widely amongst your networks. We will continue reaching out for more ways to get involved in the campaign.

Please join us.

We look forward to hearing from you and continued collective efforts.

Best regards,
Betsy McCallon
Senior Program Advisor/Promise to Mothers Lost Project Manager
bmccallon@whiteribbonalliance.org
202-777-0933



Global Secretariat
One Thomas Circle NW, Suite 200 Washington, DC USA
tel: 202.775.9680 fax: 202.775.9694
wra1@whiteribbonalliance.org


Copyright (c) 2008 White Ribbon Alliance, All Rights Reserved

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Please Sign Safe Motherhood Demands to the G8 Leaders

The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood is sponsoring this petition to the leaders of the upcoming G8 summit, the conference of the world's biggest economic powers.

Noting that one woman dies from unsafe motherhood *every minute*, the petition calls upon the summit leaders to:

--grant "an additional 10 billion dollars annually for maternal, newborn and child health."

--"increase the number of trained health workers by 4 million."

--"acknowledge that maternal mortality is one of the best indicators for judging the success of a health system."

Please sign! Lives are on the line!

Giving Life Shouldn't Cause Death

Release from the international White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood...Nonviolent Choice is a member organization. You can find a link to WRA on our Affiliations page.


White Ribbon Alliance Calls For International Monetary Fund and World Bank to Invest in Women's Health

Says Deadly Delays and Broken Promises Make Pregnancy and Childbirth #1 Killer of Women in World Today


Washington, DC - The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood today made public its appeals to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to drastically increase investments in women's health. Citing recent reports that the UN Millennium Development Goal to reduce maternal mortality by 75% by 2015 is unlikely to be met in Asia until 2076 and many years later in Africa, they challenged world leaders to
move from empty pledges to definitive action, underscoring that 99% of maternal deaths occur in developing nations and jeopardize progress to reduce infant mortality and combat HIV/AIDS and malaria.

"Maternal mortality is the single greatest health indicator of the failure of governments to meet the basic needs of society's poorest and most vulnerable women, said Theresa Shaver, White Ribbon Alliance Executive Director. "Whether in Bangladesh or the Bronx, where there is the political will to invest in health care systems to provide quality obstetric and emergency care, almost all women live through the complications that would otherwise kill them."

Experts estimate a package of maternal health services costing less than US$1.50 per person could make significant improvements in women's health in the 75 countries where 95% of maternal and child deaths occur.
(boldface ours--Marysia)

However, funding for population, family planning and reproductive health has declined since the mid-1990s, especially if HIV/AIDS money is excluded. Meanwhile, aid to the least developed countries has essentially stalled since 2003.

"Just as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank played a critical role catalyzing unprecedented investments in anti-retroviral therapy for more than two million people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa, we challenge them to prioritize investments in women's health to save mothers' lives now needlessly lost in these same countries," said Lennie Kamwendo, Chairperson of the White Ribbon Alliance in Malawi.

"Every minute another woman dies in childbirth," continued Shaver. "It is past time for the world's most powerful nations to meet their obligations with no less urgency than steps taken to fight the war on terrorism and secure stability of financial institutions. Not only is an investment in women's health one that reaps enormous economic benefits, it is the right thing to do."

The White Ribbon Alliance is leading a global campaign - A Promise to Mothers Lost: Healthy Pregnancy and Safe Childbirth for All - to hold world leaders to account for the tragedy of maternal mortality during the upcoming meetings of the World Economic Forum in South Africa, G8Summit in Japan and the UN Call to Action in New York.


For Immediate Release
Contact: Deborah Clark, Communications Director

April 11, 2008
White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood

debclark@promisetomothers.org, 202-679-2399