Interact Worldwide Maternal Health
WHAT IS MATERNAL HEALTH?
Maternal health means enjoying the highest standards possible of health and care before, during and after pregnancy. Maternal health is about women being valued, and their rights and choices being upheld. There is a great deal more to maternal health than solely preventing women from dying in childbirth. Tragic statistics determine the need for better maternal health care:
- 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 20 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.
HOW CAN MATERNAL HEALTH BE IMPROVED?
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 and AIDS services
- Stronger health systems.
Change needs to occur from the local level to the national level. 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.
