Please join us for the first event in our next module, dealing with maternal mortality!
Maternal Mortality Module: Film Screening
Wednesday, February 18th
6:30 - 8 PM
Hammer Rm. 303
Dinner will be served
Join us over dinner to watch a BBC documentary, "Dead Mums Don't Cry," on maternal mortality in Chad, followed by a short discussion and activity.
"Becoming a mother in Africa can be among the most frightening and dangerous jobs in the world. This program investigates why more than half a million women die every year in pregnancy and childbirth.
DEAD MUMS DON'T CRY documents one woman's remarkable struggle to stop mothers in her country from dying. She's Grace Kodindo - an obstetrician in the poverty-stricken central African country of Chad. Women in Chad have a 1 in 11 chance of dying during pregnancy or in childbirth. The risk for women in the UK is 1 in 5100.
Cutting maternal mortality by 75% by 2015 was one of the eight Millennium Development Goals set by 189 countries in 2000. Five years on, progress is far behind schedule - and this film reveals it's slowest on the goals that affect women and children.
But DEAD MUMS DON'T CRY shows there is reason for hope. A few poor countries have succeeded in saving mothers' lives. BBC reporter Steve Bradshaw and Grace Kodindo travel to Honduras, which has cut maternal mortality far faster than some wealthier neighbors. A key reason is that influential men and women cared enough to make the issue a priority."
Please RSVP to fwc2109@columbia.edu
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1 comment:
Everyone is saying the same thing over and over again, and yet the problems persist! Becoming pregnant is a dangerous business in resource-poor countries! Until there is a commitment by governments (regional and national)and NGOs and donors to:
-improve prenatal care
-deworm women and children
-provide medications for infections
-stock hospitals and clinics with oxygen and basic surgery supplies!
-provide emergency obstetrical care (which leads to a whole other set of concerns regarding retention of a trained work force). . .
the list could go on and on
but mothers continue to die from entirely preventable conditions!
Visit http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/ for another perspective
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