In recent years, both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have expressed concern about the safety and health of women around the world. Despite President Obama’s commitment to achieving the Millenium Development Goals, one of which specifically addresses global maternal health, and resolutions passed by the House and Senate promising Congress’ commitment to this issue, any real progress has been slow to come. Now, thanks to California Congresswoman Lois Capps, new legislation called the Global Maternal and newborn health Outcomes while Maximizing Successes Act, or the Global MOMS Act, has been introduced to the House of Representatives, giving us hope that women and children around the world will soon gain access to healthcare.
This legislation comes in response to the fact that somewhere between 350,000 and half a million women died in childbirth each year between 1980 and 2008, and another 10 million suffered from serious complications during both childbirth and pregnancy. In some countries, one out of every seven women dies during pregnancy or childbirth. Further, 8.8 million children under the age of five die each year, 3.5 million of whom die in the first month of life. In sub-Saharan Africa, nine out of 10 women will lose a child during their lifetime.
Compare these numbers to the fact that in the US one in 4,800 women dies in childbirth to see that the majority of these deaths are preventable. Indeed, according to the World Health Organization, 70 percent of maternal deaths come from only five causes: hemorrhage, infection, unsafe abortion, eclampsia and obstructed labor, all of which are easily preventable with access to care. Furthermore, treatable diseases like malaria, anemia and HIV complicate pregnancies and contribute to about 20 percent of maternal mortality in the Global South.
The Global MOMS Act calls for new funding and the collaboration of existing efforts to create comprehensive sex education programs and family planning services, and for the access to care for both mother and child at all stages of pregnancy – pre, during and post – including access to HIV-transmission prevention medicines, special care for women who have undergone Female Genital Cutting (women who have undergone FGC are twice as likely to die during childbirth and have stillborn children), immunizations, clean water, safe breast-feeding, antibiotics and orphan care.