The 2008 Humanitarian of the Year has Advanced Health Care for Yemen’s Women Through USAID-Funded Project

Suad at the InterAction Award Dinner, left to right, Dan Pellegrom (President of Pathfinder), Suad Kassim Sleh, Suad Abdullah Mohamed Mubarak (Suad’s husband), and Milka Dinev (Project Director, ESD, Pathfinder International). Source: Cara Hesse/Pathfinder International

On May 8, Ms. Suad Kassim Saleh, who works for Pathfinder International in Yemen, a project supported by USAID, was named Humanitarian of the Year by InterAction, an organization that represents more than 150 development and humanitarian NGOs worldwide. Ms. Saleh was honored for 40 years of commitment and leadership in the effort to save women’s lives in the remote regions of Yemen by advocating for and providing critical maternal health care and family planning services.

In Yemen, women face enormous challenges and obstacles. Young girls are often married by the age of 8 and receive little more than a primary school education. A Yemini woman will bear, on average, seven children. One in 19 women dies in pregnancy, making Yemen’s maternal and infant mortality rates among some of the highest in the world. In this context, the role of the midwife is critical not only for helping women survive childbirth, but also improving the overall health and well-being of mothers and children.

In the 1960s, when Suad Saleh began advocating for women’s health – and for midwives in particular – she dramatically changed the landscape for Yemini women’s health and rights. She introduced the concept of nurse-midwives who could provide community-oriented skilled attendance at childbirth for impoverished and isolated women, a necessity in a culture that requires women to be accompanied by men at all times when they are outside their homes. Today, the midwives have earned tremendous respect in their communities because they are often the only provider of reproductive and family planning services – or any health service for that matter. Men are comfortable with midwives treating their wives, women are comfortable being treated by other women, and both men and women value their skills and abilities.

Photo of Suad Saleh at the midwifery project in Yemen. Source: Milka Dinev/Pathfinder International

Suad Saleh helped establish a maternity and obstetrics teaching hospital in the 1980s in two of the most underserved districts in the country and helped establish a midwifery association dedicated to expanding the number of practicing, professional midwives and enhancing and promoting the role of midwives throughout Yemen. The association began with a handful of midwives; today, there are more than 1,800 members nationwide. With support from USAID and Pathfinder International, membership in the association has grown by more than 100 percent in the last year alone. The association has made huge strides toward improving women’s status by helping midwives establish their own businesses and advocate for social change. Today, the Yemeni Midwives Association is advocating for a new regulation that would enable midwives to wear white burqas while performing their duties, instead of the traditional black, which will help infection prevention efforts, for stains can be more easily identified on white cloth, which can also be bleached. These steps, while seemingly small, are changing the entire landscape of Yemen, by improving the lives and well-being of women, their families and their communities.

Each year InterAction recognizes an individual or individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership in support of nongovernmental organizations and the people they serve in the developing world. The award recognizes individuals whose work reflects leadership qualities such as initiative, courage, creativity, grace under pressure, and personal integrity.