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July 2009 
CHE-NL and the UN Millenium Development Goals
Alain
The Millenium Development Goals are:
- Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
- Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
- Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
- Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
- Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
- Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
- Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
- Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
CHE is involved in the setup of a project concerning Millenium Development Goal 5, Improve Maternal Health. The target is to reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio. Indicators to measure this are:
- the maternal mortality ratio (UNICEF-WHO) and
- the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel (UNICEF-WHO)
Maternal health refers to the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. While motherhood is often a positive and fulfilling experience, for too many women it is associated with suffering, ill-health and even death.
The major direct causes of maternal morbidity and mortality include haemorrhage, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, and obstructed labour.
More than half a million women die each year in pregnancy and childbirth. Most of them die because there is not enough skilled regular and emergency care. More and more women have access to skilled birth care in some parts of the world, such as South-East Asia and North Africa. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, one in 16 women has the risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth over a lifetime, compared with about one in 2800 women in the developed world.
CHE-NL initiates and supports the project organisation and creates a "meshwork" of the participating organisations by facilitiating their contribution from an evolutionairy perspective. Besides setting up the project organisation a U process with the participators leads to consciousness development and from that initiatives that are resilient, interconnected and vitalising.
We are all a child of a mother, maybe that is a good starting point to build from.
United Nations Millenium Development Goals
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
http://www.undp.org/mdg/
http://ddp-ext.worldbank.org/ext/GMIS/home.do?siteId=2
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/index.htm
Our participation in Millenium Development Goal 5 - Maternal Health
http://www.mdg5.nl/
http://www.hetakkoordvanschokland.nl/
Access: Public
Why do so many women still die in pregnancy or childbirth?
Every minute, at least one woman dies from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth - that means 529 000 women a year. In addition, for every woman who dies in childbirth, around 20 more suffer injury, infection or disease - approximately 10 million women each year.
Five direct complications account for more than 70% of maternal deaths: haemorrhage (25%), infection (15%), unsafe abortion (13%), eclampsia (very high blood pressure leading to seizures - 12%), and obstructed labour (8%). While these are the main causes of maternal death, unavailable, inaccessible, unaffordable, or poor quality care is fundamentally responsible. They are detrimental to social development and wellbeing, as some one million children are left motherless each year. These children are 10 times more likely to die within two years of their mothers' death.
Women need not die in childbirth. We must give a young woman the information and support she needs to control her reproductive health, help her through a pregnancy, and care for her and her newborn well into childhood. The vast majority of maternal deaths could be prevented if women had access to quality family planning services, skilled care during pregnancy, childbirth and the first month after delivery, or post-abortion care services and where permissible, safe abortion services. 15% of pregnancies and childbirths need emergency obstetric care because of risks that are difficult to predict. A working health system with skilled personnel is key to saving these women's lives.
Women Deliver: A Global Conference
Women Deliver is a landmark global conference that will focus on creating political will to save the lives and improve the health of women, mothers and newborn babies around the world.
It will be held October 18-20, 2007, at the ExCel Centre in London.
Register Now.
http://www.womendeliver.org/
Alain, having listened to the story of CHE's involvement in the MG5 project at last weekend's Human Emergence Confab, I was thoroughly inspired. I would love it if you would write a little more about the meshworks approach and some of the insights that came out during our conversation on Saturday. This approach is so fantastic, the more information and elaboration we can put out into the world, the better.