Today The New York Times reported about advised changes in the ways doctors should respond to the pregnancies of women who had previous Caesarean sections. The news report concluded that in many cases women who previously gave birth via C-section are able to later safely deliver vaginally. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists became [...]

In the six months following the disastrous 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti, maternal and neonatal health services have largely been secured again for many of the displaced women and girls throughout the nation. Working alongside the UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, the Haitian government has met the variety of health needs with mobile and [...]

Saving Mothers participated in a conference call with ONE President David Lane and Christy Turlington Burns. More than 2000 people joined this conference call, which focused on women’s issues and empowerment. One of the major topics of conversation was maternal health issues in Africa and other developing countries. Below are some highlights of the call [...]

One of the major objectives included in the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals is to slash the global maternal mortality rate by 75 percent by 2015, but little progress has been made in this direction, according to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
To jump start efforts to improve conditions for women and expectant [...]

Each year, over 20 million premature babies are born and 4 million of them die mainly due to the fact that they are not able to keep warm and lack access to an incubator. In this video, TED Fellow, Jane Chen, invents a life-saving tool that keeps premature babies warm. Using a low-cost, wax-like substance [...]

This article from Nicholas Kristof for the New York Times explains how the lack of key micronutrients such as folic acid (aka vitamin B9), iodine, zinc, iron and vitamin A in developing countries is causing deformities due to neural tube defects, as well as brain malformation, anemia and blindness.  The good news is that micronutrient deficiencies is one of [...]

This article from IRIN highlights the success of a program to distribute cell phones to health workers and villagers in Amensie, Ghana in preventing maternal mortality.  In the example cited by the article, an Amensie woman was able to call the hospital when she went into labor, who sent an ambulance to pick her up - in [...]

Bolivia has just instituted a new initiative that would grant pregnant women $258 over the course of gestation contingent on them attending regular pre- and post-natal medical appointments. As it stands, two women die in the country every day due to pregnancy or childbirth-related complications. The government hopes the new measure will dramatically lower this [...]

An article appearing in today’s New York Times by Denise Grady sheds light on the challenges faced by struggling medical facilities in Tanzania. Not only  is there a shortage of qualified practitioners in the country, but also a dearth of prenatal care and education — problems contributing to the 13,000 deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth [...]

Celebrated New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has traveled extensively through West Africa as the benefactor of the newspaper’s “Win-a-Trip” contest, a program that gives students the opportunity to join him on an international reporting trip. Today, his column focused on the broken maternal health system he has observed in Sierra Leone, the country with [...]