Save a Baby Life Over That of the Mother Facts

Save Moms, Save Babies

Yesterday EMC attended a USAID event, Acting on the Call: Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths.

By: Jessica Bowers, Every Mother Counts, Portfolio Director.

The event reiterated USAID's commitment along with other governments, companies and organizations to ending child and maternal deaths around the world. Nearly 300,000 women and 3 million newborns die avoidable deaths each year. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that up to 98% of women's deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth are preventable. About 45% of age 5 and under child deaths are newborns, so over the next two decades USAID and partners will concentrate more resources on 24 priority countries (6 of which EMC supports projects in) to step up the simple, inexpensive and proven solutions that save newborn lives. Among others, these include:

• Training and equipping health workers to resuscitate newborns immediately
• Keeping babies warm through skin-to-skin contact with mom
• Prenatal cotricosteroids to reduce negative impacts of pre-term birth on baby
• Investing in nutrition and encouraging exclusive breastfeeding

While most of the announcements and comments yesterday were focused on newborn and child survival, a few speakers briefly referenced some points and solutions that from our perspective deserve elaboration, most of which emphasizing the importance of moms in saving children's lives.

1. The top 3 proven drivers of child survival are: improvements in moms' education and awareness; moms' ability to regulate their fertility; and scale-up of technologies and tools.
2. When mom survives childbirth her baby is far more likely to survive as well. There's plenty of evidence supporting this, most recently a study in Kenya found that just 1 out of 4 babies whose mothers died of maternal causes made it to their 1st birthday.
3. If you want to save babies you need to go through the mom. And you need to do it with respect for the moms and their needs. Poor moms in rural communities across the world are very used to being told to do this and do that for their babies and children, but not many people are asking them what they want and what they need. Address the mom's needs first and she will almost always inevitably pass that on to her baby.
4. Access to contraceptives saves lives. More than 222 million women want access to contraceptives but can't get it. Giving women that access could prevent up to 30% of maternal deaths and save the lives of 1.6 million babies each year. And every $1 put into family planning saves governments $6 in healthcare costs that they can spend elsewhere.
5. Initiatives like Saving Mothers, Giving Life can have rapid and vast impact on the lives of moms, babies, families and communities. In just one year, SMGL reduced maternal deaths in 4 districts in Uganda and Zambia by 30% and 33%, respectively, and reduced newborn deaths by 17% and 14%, respectively. That's no small feat.

USAID announced that they'll focus nearly $3 billion over the next years on efforts like SMGL that save the lives of moms and newborns. Sounds like a lot of money right? It is, but not relative to the US budget. The fact is that while most Americans think that over 1/4 (28%) of our federal budget goes to foreign aid, it's actually about 1%, about one-fifth of which goes to global health efforts. And every investment in health has a multiplied economic and social return. Good health makes people more productive, saves them money, and allows them to invest that money into businesses and educating their kids. A healthy mom able to plan her pregnancies and to easily access affordable, respectful, quality healthcare means countless babies and children saved.

Follow the conversation: #momandbaby @usaidgh @annmstarrs @familycareintl @icrw @imhe_uw

Save a Baby Life Over That of the Mother Facts

Source: https://blog.everymothercounts.org/save-moms-save-babies-f8add6232a3

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