Tuesday 4 May 2010

Investing in front-line female health workers could help save the lives of millions of mothers and children dying unnecessarily across the developing world every year, according to our new report - State of the World's Mothers 2010.

We say countries that have trained women to deliver care within their communities have seen dramatic drops in child and maternal mortality rates. Bangladesh, for example, has reduced its child mortality rate by 64% since 1990 thanks — in part - to the recruitment of thousands of female health workers.

The report reveals that a quarter of women questioned in 41 developing countries who currently have no health services said they go without medical help because they have no access to a female health worker. More than half said they couldn’t afford the cost of treatment. 

“Women have to be part of the equation when it comes to saving mothers’ and children’s lives”, says Simon Wright, Save the Children’s Director of Health. “Even when mothers face life-threatening situations — like a labour that’s gone wrong or a baby that’s critically ill— cultural and traditional reasons can mean it’s impossible for them to seek help from a man. The cost of seeking and receiving health-care can also prove a major deterrent for poor women in need of medical help during and after their pregnancies.”

We says that for a modest investment, even women with little formal education can be trained to successfully deliver lifesaving services — like breastfeeding support, postnatal care, vaccines and antibiotics.

Globally, there is a shortfall of 4.3 million health-workers needed to tackle preventable maternal and child deaths. This is a crisis that hits mothers and children hardest — annually around 50 million women give birth with no professional help.

Apart from Bangladesh, successes in other countries highlighted in State of the World’s Mothers are: 

• Ethiopia: training mostly female community health workers in rural areas has been a priority since 2004. Child mortality has been reduced by 40% between 1990 and 2006. 
• Nepal: The deployment of 50,000 female community health volunteers has increased access to life-saving services including vitamin A supplementation, family planning, immunisations and treatment of pneumonia and diarrhoea. It has helped this very poor country cut childhood deaths by nearly 60 percent — putting Nepal on track to meet the U.N Millennium Development Goal 4 of reducing childhood mortality by two-thirds by 2015.
• Indonesia:  The government’s “midwife in every village” program has contributed to a 42 percent drop in maternal mortality since 1989.  More needs to be done, however, since a third of women still deliver in the absence of a trained and skilled health provider.

Simon Wright continued, “Health systems across the developing world need huge, sustained and long-term financial investment. Investing in women might only be part of the answer but this report shows it is a vital part.”

Case-studies and images are available on request.

For interviews with Save the Children spokespeople, contact the media office: 0+44 207 021 6841 or out of hours on +44 7831 650 409.

Download the report now