The newest Maternal Health Task Force blog post highlights an exciting new report which will be officially launched on May 19. The report, entitled Strategies toward Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality, proposes a global target for maternal mortality, supplemented by context-specific national-level targets. The targets and strategies are grounded in a human rights approach to maternal and newborn health, and focus attention on eliminating significant inequities that persist, resulting in disparities in access quality, and outcomes of care within and between countries.
Articles:
Fistula Care Plus and EngenderHealth Highlighted in ParlerHealth, USAID’s West Africa Regional Office Newsletter
Fistula Care Plus is proud to announce that one of our projects and one of EngenderHealth’s projects were highlighted in USAID’s West Africa Regional Office Newsletter, ParlerHealth. The newsletter can be read in its entirety here.
No Ceilings Report
In March, No Ceilings: The Full Participation Report, a joint effort from the Clinton Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was released. The report details both the gains made in gender equality since the UN Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 as well as obstacles that limit the full participation of women and girls all over the world. The report highlights obstetric fistula as a maternal morbidity that could be prevented with greater access to health care including family planning.
Maternal Health Priorities from the Perspectives of Researchers
Last month, the Maternal Health Task Force released a new working paper Critical Maternal Health Knowledge Gaps in Low- and Middle-Income Countries for Post-2015: Researchers’ Perspectives. We encourage you to read the paper and think about how these recommendations can shape the landscape for maternal health research, including into maternal morbidities and fistula, over the next few years.
Protecting Health Care Workers from Ebola
Alexandre Delamou, who serves as a consultant to Fistula Care Plus, recently published an article in The Lancet arguing for better protection of health care workers from Ebola in Guinea. Lack of protection of health care workers in the country has lead to a high number of deaths among the workers in Guinea, which, Dr. Delamou argues, could lead weaken the already fragile health system in the country.