Maternity Care in the Czech Republic

The organization Normalni Porod, Normal Birth, is sponosoring a petition to improve the largely substandard maternity care in the Czech Republic, including the dishonoring of the midwife profession.

Anyone from any country can sign. All you need to be is concerned that Czech women and babies have the most life-affirming pregnancy birthing alternatives they can have, like women and babies everywhere.

The petition appears in both English and Czech versions. Please click here.

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!

Another Way to Grow One's Own Food Security

The global crisis in food costs is hitting the poorest of the poor the hardest. Fortunately, there are many eco-friendly, high-yield gardening and farming methods now that can help people, including pregnant and nursing mothers, take their own nutrition and their own food security into their own hands. These methods can be adapted to a wide variety of climates.

The Nonviolent Choice Directory covers some of these methods in our section on Help With Crisis Pregnancy and Beyond: Food & Nutrition: Nutritious, Nonviolent, Eco-Friendly, and Low-Cost Eating.

In the tiny Southern African nation of Lesotho, "keyhole gardens" are catching on. Residents of the arid highlands cannot afford imported food, yet local conditions make farming very difficult.

Keyhole gardens are a blessing because they yield large amounts of nutrient-rich vegetables. And because they are in raised beds, people who are pregnant, sick, or elderly can easily tend to them. This is very important in Lesotho; it has been hard hit by HIV/AIDS, and many grandparents are raising their grandchildren.

To learn more about keyhole gardening, please check out:

--This BBC World Service Report (mostly text).

--This video from Send a Cow:

http://www.graspr.com/videos/Making-a-Keyhole-Garden

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

More Food and Nutrition Resources

Many more resources now appear in the Food & Nutrition section of the Nonviolent Choice Directory.

So many more resources that should be there, but aren't yet...Please forgive us if you needed something on this topic or any other and didn't find it. Please email editor@nonviolentchoice.info to let us know what's missing, and we will try to find it for you. Apologies, but that is about all we can do to atone for our shortfalls....Wish we were capable of so much more.....

More Clothing Resources Now in Our Directory

The Clothing section of the Nonviolent Choice Directory has been expanded. As we see it, adequate clothing is part of the human right to life. For one, no pregnant woman should ever have to be put in a position where she contemplates abortion because she has no idea how she is ever going to clothe (and supply other necessaries of life to) herself and her child or children.

Clothes can be so prohibitively expensive, particularly adaptive (disabled person's), maternity, breastfeeding, baby, premature baby, and other children's clothes. For instance, a month's supply of diapers in the US can cost a whopping $100. (Please act on our call to nonviolent arms under the DIAPER BANKS entry of our just-improved Clothing page!) So we now offer a variety of ideas for obtaining such clothes (and other types as well) at free or little cost.

Clothing is all knotted up with another burning justice issue: the immense harm that the global garment industry often causes workers, animals, and entire ecosystems. Humane, socially responsible clothes can be hard to find, and even if you can find them, they are all too often astronomically priced.

Our Clothing resources not only educate about garment industry injustices; they show ways to get free and lower-cost clothes that actually can reduce or avoid those problems.

You can also look at our Clothing resources if you want to help clothe others in need, including women and babies of difficult pregnancies.

More Resources on Maternal Child Health

Our directory has expanded the Mother and Child Health section.

If we lack vital resources in this or any other section of the directory, please do not merely critcize; please make some constructive recommendations. That will help us to do a better job for you.