3197.0: Monday, October 22, 2001: 4:30 PM-6:00 PM

Oral Session

Averting Maternal Death and Disability: A New Global Program

The Safe Motherhood Initiative, launched at an international conference on maternal mortality in Nairobi in 1987, called attention to the more than half-million women who die each year from the complications of pregnancy or childbirth. A decade later, there was little progress made in establishing major national programs to improve the availability and quality of treatments of obstetric complications. With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Mailman School of Public Health has embarked on the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) program. In close collaboration with UNICEF, UNFPA, CARE, Save the Children, and other organizations, the program works with more than two-dozen countries to establish programs to improve the availability, quality, and utilization of emergency obstetrical care. Since most serious complications of pregnancy can neither be predicted nor prevented, the AMDD program emphasizes the essential first step, namely that all women have access to emergency obstetrical care. This panel will discuss the developments of the AMDD program since its May 1999 launch, and describe the underlying human rights construct on which it is being built.
See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement.
Learning Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will be able to: (1) describe strategies to improve the quality and availability of treatment of complications of pregnancy and childbirth in developing countries (2) discuss the various reasons for working through partnerships, including reasons related to efficiency, economy, project quality and program impact; and, (3) recognize how a human rights approach can be incorporated into health program activities, such as those designed to improve emergency obstetric care at health facilities.
Moderator(s):Allan Rosenfield, MD
4:30 PMA Human Rights Approach to Emergency Obstetric Care
Lynn P. Freedman
4:42 PMMoving to the Other End of the Continuum: Save the Children's Role in Improving EmOC
Susan Otchere
4:54 PMWorking With Partners
Deborah Maine
5:06 PMUNFPA's Contribution to Preventing Maternal Death in Developing Countries: Perspectives of a UN Agency
France Donnay, Jean Claude Javet
Sponsor:International Health
Cosponsors:Community Health Planning and Policy Development; Maternal and Child Health; Socialist Caucus; Women's Caucus
CE Credits:CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing, Pharmacy, Social Work

The 129th Annual Meeting of APHA