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Investing in Women, Saving Mothers

Investing in Women, Saving Mothers | Saving Mothers, Giving Life | Saving Mothers, Giving Life Partnership

GHI recognizes the need for, and the great potential to, improve the health and the status of women and girls; and that the health and rights of women and girls have a significant impact on the success — or failure — of global health programs. By ensuring a focus on women, girls, and gender equality as one of the seven guiding principles of the U.S. government’s health investments, GHI has created an opportunity to advance U.S. leadership in this area as never before. The principle aims to redress gender imbalances related to health, to promote the empowerment of women and girls, and to improve health outcomes for individuals, families and communities.

As Secretary Clinton has often stated, women and girls are one of the world’s greatest untapped resources and investing in them is one of the most powerful forces for international development. Promoting gender equality is both a goal unto itself and a means to improving health outcomes.

Improving the health of women and girls also enhances their productivity and social and economic participation, and acts as a positive multiplier, benefiting the development and health of future generations. When women and girls have access to health care services, are valued, enjoy legal rights and protection from violence, and are educated, they are also likely to have healthier children and longer lives, with overall long-term benefit to their communities.

Over the past 20 years, the United States and partners around the world have made remarkable progress in reducing maternal mortality, increasing access to contraception, and addressing gender inequities to reduce HIV risk and increase access to HIV prevention, care and treatment services, but there is still more work to be done. Through GHI, the U.S. Government is working to support further progress and bring integrated programs together to meet women’s comprehensive health needs.

Current Situation
Recent U.N. estimates [PDF, 1.2MB] suggest that maternal deaths were reduced by half from 1990-2010. Despite the progress made, maternal mortality remains one of the leading causes of death among women of reproductive age in developing countries. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 which calls for a 75 percent reduction in maternal mortality by 2015, lags furthest behind all eight MDGs. Underlying this problem is a lack of access to family planning information and services, which affects more than 200 million women worldwide who want to delay or avoid pregnancy. Maternal health and family planning remain underserved and activities are inadequately financed. In low and middle-income countries worldwide, HIV is the leading cause of death and disease in women in reproductive age, and country studies indicate that the risk of HIV among women who have experienced violence may be up to three times higher than among those who have not. GHI’s focus on women, girls and gender equality seeks to accelerate progress by investing in the health of women and girls specifically and their economic and social well-being generally.

U.S. Government Endeavors
The U.S. Government continues to set high goals through implementing programs that aim to improve women and girl’s health, including through the platforms of USAID’s Maternal and Child Health (MCH) programs and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), among other agencies. Agencies are using a range of interventions, including:

USAID’s action plans for integrated programming in family planning, maternal and child health and nutrition;
Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development, which seeks to identify groundbreaking prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the time of birth;
The PEPFAR focus on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS; and
The Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon® Alliance, an innovative public-private partnership to combat cervical and breast cancer—two of the leading causes of cancer death in women—in developing nations in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America; and
Saving Mothers, Giving Life a partnership that aims to demonstrate that a package of focused interventions targeting labor, delivery and the 24 hours postpartum can substantially reduce maternal deaths.