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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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Making the Voices of 10,000 Women Matter for Preventing Disease
By Nalini Saligram, CEO of Arogya World. I am the mother of two beautiful young women, and what I want more than anything else is to help them put their best foot forward in life. My wish for them—and I know all mothers everywhere have similar wishes for their children—is that they live up to…
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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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Every Newborn Action Plan Launches in Johannesburg
Johannesburg – After over a year of work, the Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) was officially launched on Monday, June 30 in Johannesburg during the third Partners’ Forum. In May, the Plan was adopted by the World Health Assembly in Geneva by all 194 member countries during succesful, albeit precarious deliberations. The Every Newborn Action…
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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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24 Compelling Mobile Photos from #ICMLive
Neonatalie Newborn Resuscitation model in a baby cot, this was one of the models donated by UNFPA to 12 midwifery training schools | UNFPA/Evelyn Kiapi Have you been following the 30th International Confederation of Midwives Triennial Congress? Throughout my travels to low-and middle-income countries and reporting on maternal, newborn, and child health midwives prove time and…
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11 Key Tweets from #ICMLive
Trainee Midwives demonstrating the childbirth process using the Advanced Child birth simulator Anatomical Model donated by UNFPA at the handover ceremony at Public Health Nurses College. UNFPA/Evelyn Kiapi 3000 midwives have gathered in Prague for the 30th International Confederation of Midwives Triennial Congress. I have been reading the twitter stream closely ahead of my upcoming…
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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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Last Minute Mother’s Day Gifts That Give Back and Save Lives
Mother’s Day is a celebration full of flowers, cards, and sentimental mementos. It’s also a day to celebrate not only our mothers and the moms we know personally, but mothers everywhere. As you know there are women around the world who will lose their life giving birth. That may sound blunt, but the numbers say it…
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Support Our Partner, End 7
One thing is certain: I do not know how to read a fiscal budget, but I have sat in awe watching experts dissect the President’s budget line by line and then meticulously explain what programs have been cut and programs that have been relatively spared. So, when our partner, End 7, reported that funding for the…
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Women Helping Women in Johannesburg’s Townships
This post was originally published on Impatient Optimists. I met Jabulile Tlhabane, 57, in a small woman-owned restaurant on a busy road in Alexandra Township located about 60 minutes outside Johannesburg depending on the time of day and traffic. Alexandra, or Alex as the locals call it, is home to over a million people even though its resident…
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USAID Launches New Global Development Lab
Exactly how does the global community end poverty by 2030? According to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), it’s by working together. Today marks the official launch of USAID’s Global Development Lab, a new initiative that uses science and technology to improve global health and development outcomes around the world. Utilizing data and analytics USAID is…
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Maternal Health in Kenya
By Naomi Kamau, freelance journalist based in Nairobi. Maternal health and child delivery is a crucial phase in a mother’s life and that of her baby. I tend to believe that every mother who carries a pregnancy to full term hopes to deliver well and have a baby after nine months of ‘hard work’. For…
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How One Philanthropist is Changing Lives for India’s Women and Girls – Part II
By Indrani Goradia, founder of Wajood, a partnership between Indrani’s Light Foundation and PSI Yesterday we published How One Philanthropist is Changing Lives for India’s Women and Girls. Today we’re publishing part two of the piece. In this continuation, Indrani Goradia tells the stories of three women she met during her most recent trip to…