Maternal Health Recognition

In honor of World Aids Day, which happens to be tomorrow, and Brenna’s presentation last Monday, I was doing a little reading about HIV/AIDS and PMTCT. It’s amazing to read how far we have come in the past 20 years against fighting this virus. Even though we still have a ways to go before eliminating it, it’s amazing to think what impact has already been made. Even “UNICEF believes that the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV is possible by 2015, this means reducing the MTCT rate to below 5% and the number of children contracting HIV from their mothers by 90%” (Mbabazi, 2014). I couldn’t help but think about how we can start to make a similar impact on maternal health and why it is so difficult to raise awareness about this general problem seen globally. Why is it that everyone knows what the red and pink ribbons are for, but they can’t seem to remember what the white ribbon is for? What can we do to change this? What if there was an organization that helped to draw attention to safe motherhood on the coattails of other causes that reach peoples attention. Maternal health is affected by most health situations and so why not have a group that highlights how the big things affect maternal health?

I looked up online top 10 global health issues and came across this article titled “Top 10 Global Health Issues to Watch in 2014.” The top three were 1) Youth, 2) The lasting damage of war, and 3) Universal health coverage. We have talked about all of these things throughout the semester. It is clear to me that maternal health is embedded throughout all global health aspects. What can we do to highlight this fact to the rest of the world?

Mbabazi, D. (November, 2014). World Aids Day: How effective is PMTCT? The NewTimes. Retrieved from http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2014-11-24/183346/

Top 10 Global Health Issues to Watch in 2014. (January, 2014). IntraHealth International. Retrieved from http://www.intrahealth.org/page/top-10-global-health-issues-to-watch-in-2014

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