Maternal and newborn health
- State of the world's mothers
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This Save the Children publication reports on child mortality rates in developing countries. The report includes Child Survival Progress Rankings of 60 countries, which together account for 94 per cent of all child deaths worldwide. According to the report, Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by 150 per cent since 1990: 122,000 Iraqi children died in 2005 before reaching their fifth birthday.
Maternal and newborn health (MNH) is a cause for serious concern in developing countries. Rates of morbidity and mortality in pregnant women, mothers and newborns remain shockingly high, particularly among poorer groups. This section of the resource guide provides information on the status and determinants of MNH, why and where health systems are failing to tackle these problems and what actions are needed to improve the situation.
Increasing access to appropriately skilled and timely care is key to reducing the toll of maternal and neonatal deaths. Failures occur at household and community level, through poverty, gender bias and lack of awareness of the needs of pregnant women. They occur at service delivery level through lack of accessible, well functioning, staffed and resourced facilities, and at policy and systems level through poor planning, management and supervision, and lack of political commitment. Attention also needs to be given to cost effective ways of measuring and monitoring maternal mortality and morbidity.
The Millenium Development Goals on maternal health and child mortality have helped to concentrate efforts to improve MNH. International and national human rights and health advocacy is playing a major role. At programme level, efforts are being made through different kinds of finance and aid instruments to ensure MNH is given higher priority in health planning and resource allocation.
Latest Additions
- Linking women’s mental and reproductive health
- ( S. Allanson;J. Astbury;M. Bandyopadhyay / World Health Organization , 2009)
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This literature review examines the link between mental health and women’s reproductive health. It explores the key issues affecting women throughout the life cycle and provides an evidence b...
- AIDS prevalence erodes health services
- ( A. Case;C. Paxson / National Bureau of Economic Research, USA , 2009)
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This paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, documents the impact of the AIDS crisis on non-AIDS related health services in 14 sub-Saharan African countries. The authors,...
- Criminalising HIV positive women violates human rights
- ( A. Welbourn / All Party Parliamentary Group on AIDS, UK , 2009)
- This document outlines a presentation given by the Salamander Trust at a meeting on women and AIDS at the House of Commons in Westminster. The presenter details how, because of global attitudes, ...
- Preventing congenital syphilis
- ( G. Schmid / Bulletin of the World Health Organization : the International Journal of Public Health , 2004)
- Congenital syphilis is a preventable disease and the tools to prevent it have been available for decades. This document in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization details how a review of th...
Advocating for family planning services in Africa
- ( Africa's Health in 2010 (Academy for Education Development) , 2008)
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Provision of family planning services in Africa is hindered by poverty, poor access to services and commodities, poor coordination of the programmes, and dwindling donor funding. In addition, tradi...
