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):
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.