As part of the “Deliver Now for Women + Children” advocacy campaign by White Ribbon Alliance, a day-long workshop to build consensus and agree on a common advocacy agenda for maternal, newborn and child health issues in India was held on 22nd July. As per their invitation e-mail,
This meeting is expected to contribute to bringing together the stakeholders from all levels in order to develop common messages around MDG 4 and 5. These messages will be further used in “Deliver Now for Women + Children”, a global advocacy campaign, which was launched in India by WRAI on 11th April, 2008. The theme for “Deliver Now†India in 2008 is “Know your Entitlementsâ€, with additional focus on increasing demand for quality of care in health-service delivery. The aim of the campaign is to improve equitable access to quality health care by creating an advocacy drive uniting the voices of many partners concerned with maternal, newborn and child health. WRAI is implementing the “Deliver Now†campaign in 12 districts in Orissa.
Sheila, who attended the conference, posted her impressions on it at her blog, World on a Link.
India has one of the largest maternal mortality rates in the world. Presentations focused on maternal health in Orissa and Rajasthan, two states in India that suffer from high maternal mortality rates that participated in the study.Key findings:
- Every seven minutes one woman in India dies from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. This results in the deaths of 100,000 mothers annually.
- 25% of the world’s child deaths are 20% of all maternal deaths occur in India.
- 46% of women who died married when they are below 18
- 67% of maternal deaths are women from Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes, the groups that are the least socio-economically developed
- 96% of the deaths occur in the Hindu community
Overall, the conference was interesting and filled with good information, policy brain-storming sessions and collaboration across different organizations.
