Archive: Oct 2015

By: Kelsey Holt, Senior Project Manager, Women and Health Initiative, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Pregnant women who do not wish to—or aren’t able to—carry pregnancies to term have been largely absent in discussions at the GMNHC in…

By: Kate Ramsey, Columbia University AMDD Last week, a report of a horrifying incident in a maternity ward appeared in my email inbox. A woman was beaten by a health provider as she died on the floor while delivering in a health facility. When it…

By: Amy Boldosser-Boesch, Interim President and CEO, Family Care International The year 2015 has been one of dramatic movement for global maternal and newborn health—from the end of the Millennium Development Goals to the beginning of a universal and…

By: John Grove, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Lara Vaz, Senior Advisor, Save the Children “Hello, is anyone home?” asks a young woman from outside a home in Dire Dawa, wearing a T-shirt identifying her as part…

By: Sandeep Bathala, Senior Program Associate, Maternal Health Initiative, Wilson Center The feats that pregnant women perform under some of the most rudimentary conditions are sometimes unimaginable. On the first day of the Global Maternal and…

By: Rima Jolivet, Maternal Health Technical Director, Maternal Health Task Force Accountability ran through today’s offerings at the GMNHC, both those explicitly dedicated to the topic and others I attended. I chose the title for this blog from the…

By: Sarah Blake, MHTF consultant Presenters taking part in this afternoon’s session on “Programming for Maternal and Newborn Health during Emergencies: Lessons Learned from Epidemics and Conflict”  addressed questions of securing maternal and…

By: Sarah Blake, MHTF consultant This morning’s opening plenary session opened with a video, #Moments Matter, which laid out the task that the maternal, newborn and related communities now face: ensuring that every woman is empowered to decisions about…

By: Mickey Chopra, The World Bank; Zulfiqar A. Bhutta, Centre for Global Child Health, Hospital for Sick Children (Canada) and Aga Khan University (Pakistan) Zulfiqar Bhutta and Mickey Chopra are co-chairs of Countdown to 2015. “Ten years from…

By: Sarah Blake, MHTF consultant The Global Maternal and Newborn Health Conference in Mexico City is here! The conference kicks off with a welcome from the conference’s co-chairs, Koki Agarwal, Director of USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program…