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January 2008 News

Thursday 31st January 2008

Show to aid African birth charity
A celebration to mark Cardiff University’s 125th anniversary is being used to raise money to cut deaths in childbirth in parts of Africa. The Mothers of Africa charity was set up three years ago by a Cardiff School of Medicine anaesthetist.

Tuesday 29th January 2008

Namibia: Maternal Death Rate Shoots Up
Namibia is experiencing reversals on child, infant and maternal health despite being one of the leading countries in reporting progress on child survival. Infant and under-five mortality rates have increased, while the number of women who die during pregnancy, delivery or shortly after giving birth has doubled.

Senegal’s health workers urged to take up the challenge of MDGs
Senegalese health minister, Safiétou Thiam, on Tuesday called on all health workers to work towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) in the health sector.

Nigeria: Women Seek Strategy to Address Gender Concerns
With an estimated 37,000 (WHO) annual maternal deaths, Nigeria has the second highest maternal mortality ratio burden in the world at a rural: urban figure of 828:351 per every 100,000 live births.

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Friday 25th January 2008

JICA commends Ifugao stakeholders for zero maternal, child deaths
Recognizing the role of the community in saving the lives of women and children, the provincial and local government units and the Japan International Cooperation Agency-Maternal and Child Health (JICA-MCH) commended the stakeholders here for successfully eliminating maternal/child deaths.

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Wednesday 23rd January 2008

Sorsogon offers cash incentives for mothers giving birth in gov’t hospitals
The Provincial Health Office here has since given a P500 cash incentive to mothers who give birth to their child in government hospitals and birthing facilities in Sorsogon City and other towns across this province.

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Thursday 17th January 2008

Program tracks girls’ lives in poor countries
...the next stage of health danger for girls is adolescence when early marriage results in them having babies before they are physically mature. For many girls, it is life-threatening to give birth before the age of 15. One of the mothers in the current study is only 14.

U.S. life expectancy remains at 77.8 years
...The age-adjusted death rate was 1.3 times greater, the infant mortality rate 2.4 times greater and maternal mortality rate 3.3 times greater for the African-American population than that for the white population.

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Wednesday 16th January 2008

Nigeria: Maternal Death Decreases in Kebbi-UNFPA
UNITED Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) says maternal death has drastically reduced in some parts of Kebbi State.

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Tuesday 15th January 2008

ACNM Applauds Release of The Business of Being Born
The American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) congratulates Executive Producer Ricki Lake and Director Abby Epstein on the release of their documentary The Business of Being Born, a critique of the medicalization of childbirth in the U.S. and a celebration of normal birth and midwifery care.

WHO Rep lauds Angolan gov’t effort
...The official also highlighted the WHO contribute to the reduction of malaria, Hiv/Aids, tuberculosis and maternal and infant death rates, through the drafting and implementation of strategic documents on national health policy.

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Monday 14th January 2008

Maternal mortality rates drop in eastern Sierra Leone, officials say
Maternal mortality recorded at the government hospital in Sierra Leone’s eastern regional headquarter town of Kenema, has drastically reduced between 2005 and 2007, APA learnt here on Monday.

safe motherhood programme
...Over 40 per cent pregnancies in the developing countries result in maternal and child mortality, pregnancy-related complications and disabilities to the mother or child. And in spite of the efforts made in the last decade, the situation has not changed since 2003, with 500,000 women dying around the world every year from pregnancy and its complications.

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Friday 11th January 2008

Short Takes: More Movie Reviews - The Business of Being Born
Passionate, enlightening and unabashedly one-sided, Abby Epstein’s documentary is not for everyone. But at the very least, it should be seen by every pregnant woman in America. According to Epstein, newborn and maternal mortality rates are higher in the U.S. than almost anywhere else in the developed world. Why? She and her producer, Ricki Lake, think it may have something to do with our nation’s rejection of natural childbirth.

Panellists identify ignorance of women as principal cause of mortality
A panel discussion aimed at reducing maternal mortality in the country has identified ignorance of women, especially in the rural areas about their reproductive health, as a factor that contributes to maternal mortality in the country.

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Thursday 10th January 2008

Tracking India’s progress on MDGs
...The report gives a focused review from the point of view of socially disadvantaged groups such as dalits, denotified tribes and Muslim minorities across 10 states. It laments that despite economic progress, India is still accounting for the highest number of maternal deaths in the world.

Haryana to bring MMR down further
Apparently abashed by its skewed sex ratio, the Haryana government on Thursday said it will reduce maternal mortality from 162 to less than 100 per lakh births by 2010 as also infant mortality by ensuring “safe delivery practices”.

Steps to reduce maternal mortality rate in Haryana
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Thursday said his government has taken several initiatives to reduce the maternal mortality rate (MMR) and infant mortality rate (IMR) in the state.

Dr Jack Dumoulin, MBE, medical officer with SOE and consultant obstetrician, was born on April 12, 1919. He died on December 10, 2007, aged 88
He contributed numerous papers to specialist journals, including in 1953 a seminal paper on the use of intravenous ergometrine (a drug that makes the womb contract) to prevent post-partum haemorrhage, which was then the fourth-commonest cause of maternal death.

Angola: Deputy Minister Highlights Role of Traditional Midwives
Angolan deputy Health minister, José Van-Dúnem, Wednesday in northern Malanje province, highlighted the role played by traditional midwives in assisting mothers to deliver with safety...In his turn, Malanje governor, Cristóvão da Cunha, pledged his government’s continued effort to reduce maternal and infant death rates.

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Wednesday 9th January 2008

COLOMBIA: Black Communities Organise in Country’s Poorest Region
...The maternal mortality rate in the Chocó region is the country’s highest: 409 per 100,000 live births in 2001 - more than four times the national average.

New maternal mortality ratio be out soon
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) will by the middle of the year come out with a new maternal mortality ratio to be used for effective planning in reducing maternal mortality to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Maternal, infant mortality rate lowers; PGMA lauds nutrition industry
As if slowly realizing the country’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG), maternal and infant mortality rate has slightly declined, according to the NSO’s Family Planning Survey.

Muslims, Catholics against contraception: Workshop
Hundreds of Islamic fundamentalists staged a rally at Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta last month to protest National Condom Week campaign...Participants at a recent reproductive health workshop in Bangkok, Thailand, said cultural challenges, including religious objections to contraceptives and political ignorance, contributed to the country’s high maternal mortality rate.

Leaders demand affordable and quality reproductive health services
Many studies show most women who die during illegal abortions are housewives with unwanted pregnancies.

Nigeria: Integrating Millennium Goals on Health
...The point is that to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 which is about saving the millions of children who die before the age of five annually, we must integrate Goal number 5 which aims at reducing maternal mortality by 75% before the target date of 2015! None of these two goals can be achieved with the exclusion of the other.

Behold, world of teenage mothers
...Statistics have it that for every 100 teenagers in Nigeria, 40 are teenage mothers...Researches into this field had shown that 80 per cent of people taken to the hospital for abortion-related complications are adolescents septicemia, perforated uterus, secondary sterility complications which send many teenage girls to their graves early, thus, increasing the figure of maternal mortality which is said to be very high in Nigeria. Experts claim that Nigeria has the highest number of maternal mortality in Africa putting it at 500 out of every 50,000 live births and medical practitioners have declared that teenagers are most affected.

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Tuesday 8th January 2008

The struggle for survival remains in southern Sudan
...Maternal mortality rates are amongst the highest in the world and poverty-related diseases such as measles, malaria, tuberculosis and kala azar remain major killers.

Non-profit’s prenatal health program honors first “graduates” with toys, balloons
The program also addresses three health-related Millennium Goals, identified by the United Nations in 2000 as pressing issues hindering development: reducing maternal death, improving child health, and reducing the spread of infectious diseases by something as simple as training nurses to wash their hands frequently.

Bill aims to create pregnancy death review team
West Virginia doesn’t know how many women die in or near childbirth each year, but a proposed bill aims to change that. A bill recommended by an interim committee Tuesday would create a “maternal mortality review team” similar to teams from the state medical examiner’s office that review infant deaths and domestic violence deaths.

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Monday 7th January 2008

Chinese health statistics show longer life spans, better infant survival
...The maternal mortality rate fell from 51.3 per 100,000 in 2003 to 36.6 in 2007.

China life expectancy rises as medical spending increases
...China’s maternal mortality rate fell from 51.3 per 100,000 births in 2003 to 36.6 per 100,000 in 2007, it added.

Five drivers commended for services to pregnant women
Five taxi drivers in Mfantseman District in the Central Region, have been awarded for conveying pregnant women in labour to health facilities promptly. The rendering of this service by drivers in the district followed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by the District Directorate of Ghana Health Service and drivers’ unions in the district, to convey pregnant women in labour to health facilities without demanding payment.

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Sunday 6th January 2008

Combating maternal mortality
Bangladesh is one of the developing countries where maternal mortality due to pregnancy and childbirth complications is estimated at 3.2/1000 live births, is many times higher than that of the rates in developed countries. From such complications more women die in less than 12 hours in Bangladesh. One of the complications has been identified as induced abortion.

India's baby farm
Critics say the couples are exploiting poor women in India - a country with an alarmingly high maternal death rate - by hiring them at a low cost to undergo the hardship, pain and risks of labour. “It raises the factor of baby farms in developing countries,” said Dr John Lantos of the Centre for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Missouri.

Giving birth latest job outsourced to India
...Critics say the couples are exploiting poor women in India - a country with an alarmingly high maternal death rate - by hiring them at a cut-rate cost to undergo the hardship, pain and risks of labor.

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Saturday 5th January 2008

‘Our men do not respect women’
Despite having signed the Human Rights Declaration on the Girl Child, India is one of the three countries in the world where maternal mortality is actually rising; the other two being African countries in the throes of civil conflict and chaos. The biggest reason for this is that mothers are dying during botched abortions.

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Friday 4th January 2008

Philippines: More Efforts Needed To Improve Maternal Health, Achieve Universal Primary Education, Says NSCB
The Philippines has a low probability of achieving universal primary education and significantly improving maternal health by 2015.

Knowledge is essential for being a good Muslim
Dr. Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said that the issue of health and education for women has to be addressed as a most critical development priority at the regional and local levels.

Deaths from obesity overtake suicide toll in maternal deaths
Deaths related to obesity have overtaken suicide as the leading cause of maternal death, according to a recent UK study.

Yes, they deliver
“At the midpoint in the timeline to achieve the MDGs, the absence of progress in reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity is unacceptable,” says Thoraya Ahmed Obaid of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

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Thursday 3rd January 2008

JHPIEGO awarded over $21 million for Africa’s community health initiatives
Concerned with empowering frontline health workers in Africa by designing and implementing simple, low-cost, hands-on solutions that strengthen the delivery of health care services for 40 years, JHPIEGO, now earns grants from the US government.

Troubled Afghan maternity hospital to get U.S. help
Federal health experts are optimistic they will be able to reduce excessive deaths at an Afghan maternity hospital where a U.S. medical training program is under congressional investigation, officials said.

Female politician decries high rate of maternal mortality
A female politician in Onna Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom, Mrs Owoidighe Ekpoattai, has called on pregnant women to take advantage-free medical services provided by government.

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Wednesday 2nd January 2008

March of Dimes awards grants
March of Dimes awards grants The Big Sky chapter of the March of Dimes has awarded grants of $3,400 in Billings to address unmet maternal and child health needs.

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December 2007 Archive

November 2007 Archive

October 2007 Archive

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