Tragedy of safe motherhood initiative in Africa: Back to the Beginning

Launched at the global Safe Motherhood Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, 1987, the Initiative sought to address the near-silent tragedy of women dying during pregnancy and childbirth. Since then while multinational, bilateral, and advocacy organizations have been engaged in the challenge. Progress have been made in some countries, but the least in Africa, where the change in maternal mortality rate between 1995 and 2005 is <1%, compared to 33% in South-East Asia. 75% of the maternal and neonatal mortality is preventable through increasing access to emergency obstetric and neonatal care; the goal of the UN for 2015. In some countries of Africa, maternal mortality accounts for 50% of all deaths among women of childbearing age. Sporadic success stories abound and offer hope for decreasing the coverage gap. This session including 4 invited speakers will highlight the current status of maternal and child health in Africa, challenges to reducing the intervention gap, and programmatic examples from select countries.