This post originally appeared in Dispatches from South Africa

Definitely over my life time I’ve seen a global increase in the number of catastrophes--both man-made and natural. Earthquakes, tsunamis, famines, floods, wars, epidemic diseases, terrorist attacks . . .the list goes on. In fact, never have I felt more unsafe. I’m sometimes overwhelmed or feel hopeless. Working in government, you sometimes question how much high-level policy can do.

Every now and then someone on the ground, in the midst of the crises we face, forgets how hopeless the situation seems, overcomes powerlessness, and comes up with a simple, innovative solution that doesn’t save the world, but saves a few people, people with names. From there, it grows. That’s what Dr. Laura Stachel did.

Dr. Stachel, an obstetrician-gynecologist, traveled to northern Nigeria in 2007 with a team to investigate emergency obstetric care, and she was overwhelmed by what she saw. She saw the lights go out during an emergency cesarean surgeries, women bleed to death with no blood bank or a phone to call a surgeon, women routinely turned away and babies die due to a lack of light and no ability to perform resuscitation without power.

But she actually did something about it. She gathered the requisite technical knowledge, formed an interdisciplinary team, and launched a non-profit that created a suitcase-sized, portable, solar-powered electric system that can be used in places where there is no lighting and power to do surgeries safely or call surgeons or power a blood bank for a woman in labor.

The non-profit is called WE CARE - Women’s Emergency Communication and Reliable Electricity. And in the first 6 months they showed results, saving lives in a few countries. Since that time they have deployed solar suitcases in 9 countries including disaster relief in Haiti. WE CARE was honored as a 2010 Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) winner and an Ashoka Changemakers finalist. Both GSVC and Changemakers are programs that incubate or award promising social enterprises. WE CARE plans to produce a 2nd-generation solar suitcase, build local capacity in countries for manufacture and distribution, and continue to improve maternal care by powering ultra sound machines, fetal monitors, computers, and videos.

The wonderful benefit of this social innovation is that though it came about to solve a problem in Nigeria, it can be used around the world, and it can be used to power any medical equipment needed at night for any surgery or procedure.

We Care Solar: Saving Mothers & Infants with Solar Powered Lights and Communication from Jose Vergelin on Vimeo.

This post originally appreared in Cultural Musing of the Known World.

It is a miracle I find myself-as a woman, sitting in a safe home in a middle-class neighborhood, where it is almost effortless to find medical treatment to prevent and treat debilitating conditions.   The expansion of knowledge regarding the promotion of Maternal and Child health care has become more than a simple passion of mine, it is become one of my biggest life goals- to help reduce the number of women who suffer from preventative conditions.  Mothers and Children are one of the most important facets of a society as they both are required to continue the legacy of a great society.  This legacy is being jeopardized.  

 According to the United Nations (2008) of the two hundred million women who would like to delay or avoid childbearing, nineteen million unsafe abortions are performed, which results in sixty-eight thousand deaths.  This is one example of how severe maternal mortality can be; however, the leading causes of death of women in low-income countries are HIV/AIDS, and Maternal conditions.  These are both circumstances that can be treated and even prevented depending on the situation.  

 What must occur in order to mediate deadly consequences is to implement programs that promote safe sexual practices as well as family planning.  These programs would need to carefully overcome the cultural stigmatization that is often associated with contraception.  Being able to choose whether or not one wants to expose one’s self to potential diseases or even prevent conception, ought to be a human right, and in certain areas this is not the case.   It is because of this forced acquiescence, that girls become mothers when they do not posses the economic stability to enjoy simple resources such as pre-natal vitamins, food, and clean water.  This is why the promotion of Maternal and Child health must be addressed; otherwise this complacency will only breed a new generation, who suffer from old consequences.

by Nina Blondal

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”~ Virginia Woolf.

by Temitayo Olofinlua

Early this year, I saw three short films Too Young, Too Far, Too Late about maternal mortality by Communicating for Change, an NGO based in Lagos, Nigeria. For the first time the ‘demons’ that kill pregnant women by the minute clawed at my heart so strongly. These women were not just figures, they could be my sisters. It could be me, on that bug-ridden bed, soaked in my own blood, dead cold.

Ignorance is a primary factor that leads to maternal mortality: ignorance from women on the importance of their health; ignorance by health workers; ignorance from the government. Ignorance reeks everywhere; it kills us. The media can rescue us from this death. MDGFive.com’s innovation is about the possibilities of media to keep women alive.

A coalition between the arts and the media will go a long way to effect the change we see: one poem, one song, one film can save one woman at a time. Entertainment sinks the message into the deepest parts of us. It is watching Too Young and being grateful for the power to decide when I would get pregnant. It is watching Too Far and being sad about pregnant women in rural areas walking miles to their death. It is watching Too Late, and getting angry seeing religious ignorance as a blanket of death. I bought a book on maternal health for my pregnant sister; I wanted to see her alive even as I carried her child. I dream of women’s smile as they look into their babies’ eyes.

I stumbled on Lisa Russells idea about the role of the media in safe motherhood recently. My co-blogger made a blogpost about it. Two poet-friends are interested in the project. Information is the first step; living is the end in sight. Media has the power to transform the dying ‘anonymous’ woman to your mother, your sister and your wife. MDGFive.com can unify forces for change at the personal, communal and social levels. Each poet, each writer, each person in the MDGFive.com innovation is a voice; a voice with potential ripple effects. These voices can keep thousands of women alive.

The road to change is not easy but it is not impossible. The revolution has started online but shouldn’t end there; the drums should be heard everywhere: schools, offices, government houses, hospitals and the market. Maybe then, women would pay more attention to their bodies. Maybe the government would execute more maternal friendly laws. Maybe medical personnel would pay closer attention to women’s health. Maybe life-endangering practices against women would end. Words and pictures stamp themselves on our hearts. They cling to our throats till we change. They would not let go until women no longer die as they give life.

The blogpost can also be found on Bookaholic Blog.

Temitayo Olofinlua is a freelance writer based in Lagos, Nigeria. Her essay, “Fear—The Enemy of Gender Equality” won the Women Learning Partnership Essay Competition earlier this year.

This post originally appeared in Blood and Milk

by Alanna Shaikh

I have been watching the Ashoka Healthy Mother Competition with interest. Maternal Health is one of my passions; I studied it in graduate school and it has been part of my work for the last ten years. The ideas submitted to the competition have ranged from half-considered flashes of thought to fully imagined comprehensive maternal health programs. I am an advisor to one of them – AYZH, a social venture that works to provide clean, green birth kits to women in India.

It will not surprise you, then that I would love to attend the 2010 Maternal Health Change Summit in India. This post is my entry in the contest to attend the summit. I’m not going to talk about AYZH here, because it doesn’t seem quite fair to write about something so close to my heart in this context.

Instead, I will write about Sakeena Yacoobi. Founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), she is one of the true heroes of this world. An Afghan-American, she returned to Afghanistan to serve women in her country of birth. The Afghan Institute of Learning offers services from basic education to human rights leadership training for 350,000 women and children in Afghanistan. They supported underground schools during the Taliban regime.

They also offer health care and health education. AIL is the provider of medical care for thousands of Afghan women. They use a family health approach, focusing on education and preventative care as well as medical services. When you are dealing with maternal health, it’s the gold standard. Women need knowledge in order to have a health pregnancy, not just skilled care when giving birth.

One of the most interesting things about maternal health is the range of interventions we have to improve it. We need both innovations like better incubators for premature infants and well-known essentials like educating mothers, supporting maternal nutrition, and skilled personnel to accompany births.

AIL offers those essentials, to women who have not other options. Maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan are staggering. 18 mothers out of every thousand die as a result of motherhood; the second highest rate in the world. The three clinics of the Afghan Institute of Learning are helping to bring that number down, and they deserve our support to do it.

Check out other solutions for improving maternal health or to participate in the global call to solutions, please visit Healthy Mothers, Strong World: The Next Generation of Ideas for Maternal Health. www.changemakers.com/maternalhealth

This post orginially appeared in ktravula - a travelouge!

Some day before I leave here, I’ll be attending a baby shower of a friend and former student of this institution. A baby shower is an event where people gather to celebrate the life of a baby that has not yet been born. Alright. Forget all that naming ceremonies we do in Nigeria eight days after the child is born. Here, the baby shower takes place before the child is born. Isn’t it amazing? The said baby by the time of the shower would have already gotten a name. All that will be left is delivery.

There are many reasons pregnant women in Nigeria and much of Africa don’t celebrate their babies before they are born, and much of them are based on superstition. The most concrete of reasons will have to do with the maternal and infant mortality. Because of lack of adequate healthcare for much of the poor pregnant women in the villages who also lack access to education, good food and good shelter, many children are lost at childbirth, or to debilitating diseases afterwards. In cities, due to lack of good state or private hospitals, this happens to middle class people in the cities as well, except they are rich enough to go abroad to have their babies. I guess in cases like that, it would be futile to celebrate life when even its beginning is in doubt. The rest is cultural. From history, and from a tradition that probably predates the migration of Yoruba people to the west of the Niger river from wherever the came from initially, children are celebrated at birth, and named on the eighth day. End of story.

Among many other differences in pregnancy attitudes in America and Nigeria is disclosure. Unlike what I am more familiar with, here, people would tell you that they are pregnant even before the protrusion shows itself. For a reason perhaps close to superstition as well, you won’t find African women doing that. And you can’t ask them why. So,as it has happened to me several time while I was growing up, I would find myself unable to discuss the existence of someone’s pregnancy – even when it stared me in the face – until they gave birth. I wonder how much of that has changed with modernization.

With access to stable electricity, much of the problems (especially in Nigeria’s healthcare) would be solved. Sometimes, it is that simple. Hospitals will be able to offer better healthcare services if there is stable power. That is one of the biggest challenges before the Acting President Goodluck Jonathan who is now in the United States on a state visit to meet with the US President. He has about a year to set in motion plans to put the nation back on the track of development. A huge but worthwile task. There is a longer article about maternal mortality here by Eyinade Adedotun.

Check out other solutions for improving maternal health or to participate in the global call to solutions, please visit Healthy Mothers, Strong World: The Next Generation of Ideas for Maternal Health. www.changemakers.com/maternalhealth

This post originally appeared in Global Health Ideas

By Jaspal

The answer is yes if you ask Carina Lupica.

Carina is Executive Director of Fundación Observatorio de la Maternidad (OM), an entrant in this year’s Healthy Mothers, Strong World competition. The competition, jointly sponsored by Ashoka and the Maternal Health Task Force, seeks to identify maternal health innovations from around the world. OM is a globally unique organization that is dedicated to using data as a policy advocacy tool for maternal health in Argentina.

Argentina’s maternal mortality ratio (MMR) – 44 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2007 – is much lower than high maternal mortality countries, but it is high when compared to other national indicators (Ramos et al., WHO Bulletin, 2007). In 2007, OM identified a lack of quality data focused on maternal health issues as a key gap in Argentina. OM has responded to this gap by aggregating data from various sources to develop a comprehensive understanding of the maternal health landscape in Argentina. OM maintains a holistic view of maternal health, including environmental factors and social issues, such as access to clean drinking water and the increasing frequency of single mothers.

As Carina writes by email, “This is brand new information that contributes to a complete diagnosis of the state of motherhood, which constitutes the necessary grounds for any public policy proposal.”

The organization’s focus on policymakers is having a real and significant impact. In 2009, OM research helped to pass national law 1914-D-2009: Universal Payments to Children and Adolescents (link in Spanish), a conditional cash transfer program that aims to reduce poverty and improve family health. This program was based on OM research showing that poorer mothers are more likely to contribute a higher share of household income, 72.5% in the lowest income group.

Just this month the Lancet published a study that estimated that there were 343,000 maternal deaths in 2008. Included in this study were detailed estimates for individual countries, including success stories such as China, Egypt, and Bolivia. Study lead Christopher Murray remarks, ”Finding out why a country such as Egypt has had such enormous success in driving down the number of women dying from pregnancy-related causes could enable us to export that success to countries that have been lagging behind.” As with OM, this comment suggests that better data can result in better maternal and child health.

Can better data save the lives of mothers? Absolutely.

The important question now is this: Can the OM model be replicated globally?

This post originally appeared in K-Blog.

By Karen