Interact Worldwide Maternal Health
Maternal health means enjoying the highest standards possible of health and care before, during and after pregnancy. There is a great deal more to maternal health than solely preventing women dying in childbirth. Yet, in many developing countries the situation is so critical that the international community have set the bar very low: saving women's lives. Tragic statistics bear out the need. Every minute a woman dies because of pregnancy or child birth complications amounting to 529,000 needless deaths per year. For every woman who dies at least another twenty will suffer injuries which are often humiliating, painful, disabling and permanent. Almost all of these women live in Africa and Asia, and almost all these deaths are preventable.
Interact and their partners see improvement in the health of mothers as contingent on the equality of women, access to sexual and reproductive information and supplies including family planning, combating violence against women, accessible integrated HIV/AIDS services, and stronger health systems. Change needs to occur from the local level (where a woman’s family allows her to access the medical help she needs) to the national level (where governments start to commit the $2 per person per year the World Bank estimates necessary to ensure basic and acceptable maternal health services).
Interact Worldwide supports partners in a variety of different interventions on maternal health: advocacy on better local health facilities; access to safe legal abortion services and post-abortion care; information and services on sexual and reproductive health; making HIV services such as the prevention of mother to child transmission more accessible to women. Maternal health is about women being valued, and their rights and choices being upheld.
