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Uganda Holds First National Family Planning Conference
While her husband holds their youngest child, Twesigye Christente waits to receive a long-acting contraceptive at the Kinaaba Health Center II. Photo: UNFPA/Omar Gharzeddine This week Uganda held its first national family planning conference in Kampala. This is particularly significant because family planning has not always been pressing on the agenda of Uganda’s longtime president, Yoweri Museveni. In…
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Can Africa Truly Feed Itself and the World?
Can Africa truly feed itself and the world? If you ask former UN Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kofi Annan, the answer is a resounding yes. In fact, during his tenure as the head of the United Nations Annan says in the latest round of FutureFood 2050‘s interviews that he made food security in Africa…
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Photos from the Field: NeoNatalie Newborn Educational Mannequin
In low-resource settings across the globe midwives are learning about the critical first hour after birth that can keep more newborns alive through Helping Babies Breathe training. In Yetoban, Ethiopia at Project Mercy midwives take skills labs classes that will utilize the NeoNatalie Newborn educational mannequin. Midwifery training at Project Mercy is through a partnership between Jhpiego,…
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Save the Date: Our Twitter Chat About #ChildHealth #MDG4 on August 18
August 18, 2014 marks 500 days to reach the Millennium Development Goals, the set of goals signed into action in September 2000 to reduce extreme poverty in a variety of topic areas from eradicating poverty to ensuring environmental sustainability. MDG 4, or reduce child mortality, laid out a concrete goal to reduce child mortality by…
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Photos from the Field: Expectant Mother Seeks Help in “Lie and Wait” House #Ethiopia
Expectant woman, Ayelech Fikadu, and her mother, Zarge Badunga sit in a “lie and wait” house at Project Mercy outside of Butajira, Ethiopia. The house was recently renovated by USAID and Pathfinder. Butajira is located in Ethiopia’s southern highlands where many live in the mountains. Women who live in the mountains have a difficult time…
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Photo From the Field: Nine-Day-Old Newborn
This woman in Mosebo village, 43 kilometers from Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, holds her nine-day-old baby and quickly quiets him by breastfeeding him in her home. Save the Children is working diligently with the Ethiopian Federal Government to properly train health extension workers and provide continuing education for the workers to help save the lives of vulnerable newborns.…
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Photos from the Field: Child Marriage
This is a young, expectant mother who lives near Butajira, Ethiopia. She was married at 13 and will deliver her first child at 15. She walked to this “lie and wait” house (pictured above) because of excessive bleeding. She lives 30 minutes up in the mountains of southern Ethiopia from the “lie and wait” house. She…
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Researcher Advocates New Way to Develop Malaria Vaccine
Currently there is no effective vaccine to protect against malaria even though the disease kills 600,000 people annually and 3.4 billion people worldwide are at risk of contracting the debilitating and potentially fatal disease. 90 percent of all malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa according to the World Health Organization. The Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap set…
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Inside Sierra Leone’s Maternal and Newborn Mortality Rates
With an overall population of 5.9 million people in Sierra Leone, 200 women will die today from complications during childbirth. Every year, 2400 women lose their lives due to pregnancy related causes in Sierra Leone. And, close to 10,000 babies die every year during their first month of life. There has been notable progress in…
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Can a Village Revolution for Mothers and Newborns Go Global?
By Carolyn Miles, President & CEO, Save the Children. Follow Carolyn Miles at @carolynsave. Fifteen years have passed since a husband and wife team in western India challenged the notion that the deaths of thousands of mothers and millions of babies during pregnancy and childbirth are inevitable in poor and remote communities. Drs. Abhay and Rani Bang trained a…
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#SouthAfricaCares Side Event In Photos #PMNCHLive
During a packed event at Michelangelo hotel in Johannesburg, key partners including Save the Children, World Vision, PATH, Mothers 2 Mothers, and the Society of Midwives of South Africa came together to rally support for newborns and celebrate the progress thus far to save millions of vulnerable newborns around the world. The Every Newborn Action…
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How Ethiopia is Scaling Midwifery to Save More Mothers, Newborns
Addis Ababa- In Ethiopia there are 4.9 million pregnancies each year of which 84% take place in rural areas. Here in Ethiopia, where the vast majority of women deliver at home, only 32% of maternal, newborn and child health needs are being met by midwives according to the newly released State of Midwifery Report. That is troubling…
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Journalists Travel to Ethiopia to Report on #NewbornHealth
It may seem a little quiet around SocialGoodMoms.com, but for good reason. I am co-leading a group of journalists throughout Ethiopia who are reporting on newborn health with the International Reporting Project. Putting together a robust itinerary for the journalists has been a capstone to all of the knowledge I have gained since learning about…
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Why Newborns are on the World Health Assembly’s Agenda
Today the 67th World Health Assembly convened in Geneva, Switzerland. On tap this week will be discussions about health issues ranging from climate change to tuberculosis. Also on the agenda is a key discussion about newborns and the draft of the Every Newborn Action Plan (item 14.2 on the agenda). You might remember that as…
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Save the Children Releases New Report on Motherhood in Conflict
This article was originally published on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Impatient Optimists. Every year Save the Children releases its annual State of the World’s Mothers report and each year a magnifying glass is held up to motherhood around the world and how mothers fare based solely on where they live. Now in its fifteenth year, Save the…
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WHO Releases New Maternal Health and Mortality Data
Maternal health is one of the world’s biggest global health priorities especially as the deadline for the Millineum Development Goals near. As a global priority MDG 5 (improve maternal health) cannot be effectively measured without full and complete data resources. According to the new report, Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 – 2013, only 40% of countries accurately record…
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Sharing the Gift of Health – this Mother’s Day and Every Day
By Casey Santiago, Founder and CEO of Kangu.org As every mom can attest, motherhood changes you. For me, becoming a mother made me feel, for the first time, part of a global sisterhood. Though we may live very different lives, all the world’s moms share one of life’s most beautiful experiences – becoming and being…
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Has the Global Community Failed the Central African Republic?
A view of internally displaced children at the main mosque in Bangui during the Secretary-General’s visit. It comes as no surprise that many in the international community are now admitting that the Central African Republic, which many believe now rests on the brink of genocide, has been failed entirely. For one, sectarian fighting and ethnic cleansing…
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Have You Heard How Rice University is Saving Newborns?
Throughout the entire Mother’s Day month we will dedicate several posts to newborn and maternal health. We will feature programs and projects that are showing considerable progress in newborn health, are efficient and cost-cutting, and are even shaking up the newborn health and survival landscape with innovations in low-and middle-income countries. Even though it’s not May…
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President’s Malaria Initiative Releases New Report
For those of you who love global health data, the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) launched its latest report, the Eighth Annual Report to Congress, last week. Drawing on cumulative country data gathered over the course of fiscal year 2013 as well as over the last eight years when PMI launched we learn pertinent milestones that have been achieved to…