Maternal Deaths Focus Harsh Light on Uganda, July 29 2011

ARUA, Uganda — Jennifer Anguko was slowly bleeding to death right in the maternity ward of a major public hospital. Only a lone midwife was on duty, the hospital later admitted, and no doctor examined her for 12 hours. An obstetrician who investigated the case said Ms. Anguko, the mother of three young children, had arrived in time to be saved.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/world/africa/30uganda.html?pagewanted=all

 

This is why we, at Pre-vent, are focusing on providing education and essential priority medicines for mothers in Uganda.  Robin

Infant Deaths Drop After Midwives Undergo Inexpensive Training

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

New York Times, May 2011

Giving midwives simple training has already been shown to save newborns’ lives, and a new study in Zambia has found that it can be remarkably cost-effective as well.

Even a small pilot project costing only $20,244 saved the lives of 97 infants, the authors estimated, meaning that it cost just $208 per life saved.

The study, published online in April in the journal Pediatrics, was paid for by the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and conducted by American and Zambian university and government doctors.

Midwives from 18 Zambian clinics were taught a basic course in newborn care and encouraged to teach their colleagues as well. The course covers simple interventions like cleaning and warming a newborn, resuscitation, breast-feeding and diagnosing common illnesses. (Above, a birth attendant listened for a baby’s heartbeat with a clay stethoscope.)

The midwives normally handled births that were expected to be uncomplicated, with women typically going home with their babies after one night in the clinic.

The researchers compared survival rates among 20,000 babies born before the teaching and 20,000 afterward. The first-week death rate among babies had dropped by almost half, they found, to 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births from 11.5 deaths.

Past studies have suggested that the single most important aspect of training, in terms of saving lives, is to teach midwives that an infant who is not breathing at birth can be revived with quick action — by massaging to prompt it to inhale, or using a simple resuscitator.

124th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)

16 APRIL 2011 | PANAMA CITY – Parliamentarians from around the world at the 124th IPU Assembly were told they could make an important difference in the health of women and children –this message from both the Executive Director of UN Women, Ms Michelle Bachelet and PMNCH Director, Dr Carole Presern. PMNCH also held a roundtable in which parliamentarians discussed their role in ensuring accountability in key MNCH health initiatives including the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, with an update on the Initiative – the Countdown to 2015 in Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival—from Dr Andres de Francisco.

http://www.who.int/pmnch/media/membernews/2011/20110416_ipu_meeting/en/index.html

Women and children to benefit from new recommendations to improve health accountability

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, 2 May 2011 – New recommendations calling for an unprecedented level of accountability to save the lives of more women and children in developing countries were agreed today by the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health. These new approaches will help ensure that pledges are honoured and resources spent in the most effective way to save lives

http://www.who.int/pmnch/media/membernews/2011/20110430_accountability_commission/en/index.html

Pico Projectors for Rural Health Education

Elizabeth Dourley-April 28, 2011-Projector Central

http://www.projectorcentral.com/education_blog.cfm?2011-04-28-Pico-Projectors-and–Rural-Health-Education&entry_id=405

There is nothing as satisfying as when multiple interests converge to create something new and exciting.  As our resident pico projector cheerleader, my passion for the potential use scenarios of these handhelp projectors led me to offer one as a solution to obstacles faced by an organization near and dear to my heart, Pre-vent, as their co-founder surveyed programs in Africa and Guatemala.

A woman dies every minute of every day mostly in developing countries during unattended or complicated childbirth.  Pre-vent.org is a non-profit maternal child health organization committed to reducing morbidity and mortality at the community level in rural areas of developing countries.  The organization does this by improving patient education and access to quality services.

21st Century learning is quite the undertaking in areas where running water and electricity and even cellular telephone coverage are a novelty.  This translates to no laptops, no visuals, no outreach and hence a perpetuation of the status quo which is a cycle of disease and death.   Robin Jafari, MD, co-founder of Pre-vent, equipped with an  Optoma PK 301 and a memory card loaded with USAID e-learning courses was able to project easily to five community health workers  who in turn can create a multiplier effect for the education of the region.

An exciting and evolving innovative new technology in the field of rural health education, pico projectors allow effective communication and modern training in the most undeveloped conditions.  The word is that Robin is seeking the assistance of the Gates Foundation to distribute pico projectors to all of their programs.  With prices for pico projectors starting at $199, this is a cost-effective component that facilitates the goal of providing women and children in developing countries access to preventive healthcare and information.

Maternal Child Global Health Foreign Aid in Peril

JUDY WOODRUFF: The U.S. now spends $474 million on problems faced by women overseas. And the president’s 2012 budget would add another $372 million. That is just one part of the overall non-military foreign aid budget of $37 billion, which the Republican majority in the House wants to cut.

Amid tensions in the Middle East, the war in Afghanistan, and rising deficits, they argue all foreign aid must be tied to national security.

Yesterday, in an interview, former first lady Laura Bush argued maternal and child health is vital to national security.

VIEW the interview by following the link below:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june11/foreignaid_03-10.html

Celebrate 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day

WORLD OF WOMEN (WOW) FILM FESTIVAL will be celebrating 17 years of women’s short film excellence. This prestigious festival is presented by Women in Film and Television (WIFT) NSW and screens from March 8-10th in Sydney at Dendy Opera Quays.

Read article by following link below:

http://www.prlog.org/11245180-celebrate-100th-anniversary-of-international-womens-day-at-the-world-of-women-wow-film-festival.html

US to Increase AIDS Fund Donation

The Obama administration is expected on Tuesday to announce a large increase in its pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and to call for reform of the organization.

The pledge of $4 billion over the next three fiscal years to the Geneva-based organization comes as governments and donors around the world have slowed increases in spending to combat HIV/AIDS, with weaker economies straining budgets.

At the same time, pressure has grown on the Global Fund to speed up disbursements, slash bureaucracy, review grant proposals more critically, and strengthen monitoring and evaluation.

The U.S.—the largest contributor by far to the Global Fund, with more than $5.1 billion donated since 2002—is pressing the organization to develop an “action agenda” with timelines and measurements, “so that all parties concerned … can be held accountable,” a senior administration official said Monday.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704847104575532443902592212.html?

KEYWORDS=us+will+increase+aids+fund+donation

Global Strategy for Maternal/Child Health

The new UN Strategy is a multi-sector collaboration to save the lives of 16 million women and children, launched by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the Every Woman, Every Child event at the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit in New York. The Strategy drew more than $40 billion in pledges and commitments from governments, civil society, philanthropists, and the private sector.

I am happy to see a major shift towards prevention and a timely emphasis on maternal/child health.  We’re finally moving in the right direction. JMJ

copy and paste link below into browser and read more:

http://www.un.org/sg/hf/Global_StategyEN.pdf

Better Prevention is the Next Frontier For curbing HIV/AIDS in Newborns

NRP- July 21 2010

The biggest buzz at an HIV/AIDS meeting in Vienna this week may have been about using an antiviral gel to prevent infection women.

But public health officials are also thinking a lot about how to keep babies healthy and free of HIV.

In a first, the World Health Organization says its OK for HIV-infected mothers to breastfeed their babies as long as one of them is taking antiretroviral drugs.

The recommendation is part of new WHO guidelines for earlier HIV testing and treatment for pregnant women and their newborns. “We’re really entering a new era” of thinking about prevention, said Ying-Ru Lo, a WHO spokesperson currently at the International AIDS conference in Vienna.

Lo told Shots over the phone that with earlier treatment, we can prevent more than 75 percent of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Forty-nine countries, including Thailand, Botswana and Malawi, have already adopted the 2010 guidelines.

But, despite global efforts to fight HIV, we still face a huge challenge. How huge? Here are the stats:

• One-third of infected babies die before their first birthday. About half die before age 2.
• Only about half of pregnant women living with HIV got antiretroviral drugs to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies in 2008.
• About 90 percent of roughly 400,000 new HIV infections per year in children still occur through mother-to-child transmission.
  

WHO’s Lo said that to make good on the new recommendations, health systems around the world will have to better link medical treatment for mother and child.

Places like Botswana, Swaziland and Namibia have already been successful in eliminating mother-to-child HIV transmission.  But Dr Paul De Lay, a UNAIDS director, told the media in Vienna that it’s possible to eliminate mother-to-child transmission altogether by 2015.

The new guidelines would about double the cost of providing drugs and services to women.  De Lay estimated that costs would go up to $1.5 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.  But the benefit, he told the WSJ, is saving hundreds of thousands of babies a year.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/07/21/128672053/hiv-aids-babies-breastfeeding-antiretroviral-drugs?print=1