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NOTRE DAME VIRTUAL SCHOOL
 IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH
Target by 2015:
Reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters.
Healthy children need healthy mothers.
A woman dies from complications in childbirth every minute – about 529,000 each year -- the vast majority of them in developing countries.~
A woman in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth, compared to a 1 in 4,000 risk in a developing country – the largest difference between poor and rich countries of any health indicator.
This glaring disparity is reflected in a number of global declarations and resolutions.~ In September 2001, 147 heads of states collectively endorsed Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5: To reduce child mortality rate by 2/3 and maternal mortality ratio by 3/4 between 1990 and 2015. Strongly linked to these is Goal 6: To halt or begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
WEBSITES (Excerpts from the websites appear below)
[Pristina, Kosovo: For IVD, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme team in Kosovo commissioned a local artist to come up with a new spin on the Millennium Development Goals.
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Many people consider the day their child was born the happiest day in their life. In the world's wealthier countries, that is. In poorer countries, the day a child born is all too often the day its mother dies. In high-fertility countries in sub-Saharan Africa, women have a one in 16 chance of dying in childbirth. In low-fertility countries in Europe, this number is one in 2,000 and in North America it's one in 3,500.
PROJECTS and RESOURCES
The above site provide opportunities to organize events around the 8 Millennium Development Goals.
On important national or International days, or when you sense a window of opportunity on the political scene, media or during election campaigns, for example, you can:
- Chalk your campus with the 8 Goals
- Set up information kiosks at campus events
- Organize a student debate on development issues related to the Goals
- Organize a concert (to raise awareness and/or money)
- Put educational, eye-catching posters around your school
- Invite experts to speak with students about Goal-related issues
- Host a hunger banquet
- Get sponsored to live on $2 a day
- Host a fair trade fashion show
- Organize peaceful marches or mass demonstrations
- Create public symbols (like using a crowd of people to form a giant “0.7%”)
- Tie white bands (white is the international symbol of the fight against poverty) in visible places or encircle a building with people in white
If you have organized a unique~activity~to champion the Millennium Development Goals or any related issue like human rights, fair trade or~global citizenship and want to share it with other students in Canada, please write to us at: info@8goals.ca.
What needs to be done?
Achieving Goal 5 will require governments to expand reproductive health care services, especially in rural areas. Providing fast access to medical centers can save millions of lives. It is also important to ensure that a midwife or doctor is present at every delivery. In developing countries, only about half of deliveries are attended by professional health staff.
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ARTICLES
Target: to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters
Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will require the ingenuity, solidarity, and creativity of millions of ordinary people though voluntary action. Efforts on the part of national governments, supported by the international community, can only complement what ultimately will depend on the full involvement of people all over the world. Six billion people have something to contribute. Recognizing this fact is the first step on the road towards harnessing this vast resource in a global effort to meet the MDG targets.
Globally, more than 500,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth annually. In the developing world, the risk of dying in childbirth is one in 48, even though virtually all countries now have safe motherhood programmes. Working primarily at local level with a range of development partners, the UN Volunteers (UNV) programme supports activities aimed at the successful promotion of public health care policy, strengthening institutional capacity for effective service delivery, fostering community participation and ownership, and raising awareness on critical health issues.
SND EDUCATION PROJECT
The Sisters of Notre Dame from across the congregation have constructed a prayer-study-action program. Each section includes references to sources, websites, and further information about the goal and what others around the world are doing to reach it.
The pdf file on MDG #5 can be found in this Unit
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