mothers2mothers welcomes the UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health
CAPE TOWN, 22 September, 2010 –mothers2mothers welcomes the Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health and answers UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s call for commitments to be made to improve the health of women and children around the world.
With just five years left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), The Global Strategy highlights the need to accelerate progress on improving the health of women and children. Less progress has been made on MDG 5, improving maternal health, than any other. The Global Strategy calls for scaling up and prioritizing a package of high-impact interventions, strengthening health systems, integrating efforts across diseases, and promoting human rights, gender equality and poverty reduction. Success would mean saving the lives of millions of women and children.
“While significant gains have been made in the last decade, we cannot permit ourselves to fall short of our goals.” said mothers2mothers founder Dr. Mitch Besser. “We must rededicate ourselves to fighting for the rights and health of women, especially mothers, and work in a comprehensive and coordinated way for their welfare.”
The Global Strategy sets out key areas where action is urgently required. Some examples of how mothers2mothers commits to meeting these challenges include:
“While significant gains have been made in the last decade, we cannot permit ourselves to fall short of our goals.” said mothers2mothers founder Dr. Mitch Besser. “We must rededicate ourselves to fighting for the rights and health of women, especially mothers, and work in a comprehensive and coordinated way for their welfare.”
The Global Strategy sets out key areas where action is urgently required. Some examples of how mothers2mothers commits to meeting these challenges include:
- Strengthening health systems and building health workforce capacity by training and employing HIV-positive mothers as “Mentor Mothers” to provide counselling, education, and support to newly diagnosed HIV-positive pregnant women and new mothers, reducing the impact of chronic shortages of doctors and nurses
- Providing integrated care by helping prevent babies from contracting HIV through mother-to-child transmission while helping HIV-positive mothers stay healthy by increasing their access to life-sustaining medical care, and providing education on reproductive health, family planning, and nutrition
- Promoting gender equality by empowering mothers living with HIV, enabling them to fight stigma in their communities and to live positive and productive lives
- Advancing poverty reduction by paying our Mentor Mothers, who become role models in their communities
mothers2mothers goes beyond the UN Secretary’s call to action by advancing four of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that most directly affect Women’s and Children’s Health:
#3 – promoting gender equality and empowering women
#4 – reducing child mortality
#5 – improving maternal health
#6 – combating HIV/AIDS
We support the Secretary General’s effort to focus attention and resources on women and children and believe it will make a difference for current and future generations.
