|
Momorandum Archive »
Executive Momorandum
The Great Maternal Health Divide
9/24/2009
- The Great Maternal Health Divide
As the complex women we Executive moms are, we can vacillate from the frivolous
to the fundamental. On that latter end of the spectrum, and as mothers who
strive to have a view that extends farther than our own backyards, we thought it
was worth sharing a few highlights from Unicef's 2009
State of the World's Children Report.
Focus On: Maternal and Child Health Around the World
 The
State of the World's Children is Unicef's flagship annual report, each year
addressing a different
global topic involving children. In
2007, we were tremendously honored to be featured in
their report as their example of American working motherhood, when
their focus that year was on gender discrimination and equality for women and
girls, around the world. (The video is still on
unicef.org
if you'd like to take a look).
This year's report takes on the important topic of the
health of mothers and infants. Just as the U.S. healthcare
system is the subject today of such intense debate, our issues, significant as
they are, seem to stand in stark contrast to the issues affecting pregnant
women, new mothers and their newborns in developing nations. Some sobering
findings (best ingested with a dose of appreciation for our own circumstances):
-
Having a child remains one of the biggest health risks
for women worldwide; a half a million women lose their lives every year
while giving birth.
-
However the risk is dramatically greater -- 300 times
greater -- for women in developing countries than for those in the
industrialized world. In fact, this difference is often termed
the greatest health divide in the world.
-
The ten countries with the highest lifetime risk of
maternal death are Niger, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Angola, Liberia,
Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali. A
woman's lifetime risk of maternal death in these countries ranges from 1 in
7 in Niger to 1 in 15 in Mali. (For perspective, the odds are 1 in 48,000 in
Ireland).
The Good News (There is a Little)... And What More
Can Be Done
With the right education and intervention, progress in these
regions in possible, as evidenced by the big
improvements in their child survival rate in recent years. Now
similar progress is necessary in addressing the health risks for the mothers,
especially during childbirth and the immediate days following. The report
recommends more essential services, provided through health systems that
integrate home, community and facility-based care. And, as in so many
cases, education is considered pivotal -- along with both the protection and
empowerment of women -- to forging real improvement in maternal and neonatal
health and bridging this great divide. A healthcare victory we would all
want to claim.
To learn
more read the whole report on unicef.org
Our
Latest Blog Post
 It is a natural tendency in editorializing about and for executive moms to focus
on the executive part, or the mom part, or as a function of this, the kids part.
But (for those to whom this applies), what about the wife part? Sometimes
it takes a little focused couple time to be
reminded of how much its care and feeding matters too.
Read Marisa's Blog
|
