Photo: Louise Sherwood/PlusNews

Red Cross staff gives training to volunteers (file photo)

– The International Movement of the Red Cross is calling on people to do more to help those in need, as it launches its three-year ‘Our world, Your move’ campaign. 

The campaign is among a series of events to mark 2009 as the 150th anniversary of the Red Cross Movement, the 90th anniversary of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is the world’s largest humanitarian network, with tens of millions of volunteers responding to crises and developing local capacity in 186 countries.

“We want to pay homage to the people who commit individual acts to make a difference, and push for more individuals to do more to help others in need,” IFRC West Africa spokesperson, Noora Kero, told IRIN. “It is everybody’s responsibility to do so. This is a call to action.”

aj/np  source.www.irinnews.org

Photo: Heba Aly/IRIN

Displaced children in school in eastern Chad

DAKAR,  – A new index ranking how well-prepared children are to succeed in school puts Chad last among 100 countries studied, followed by Afghanistan, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali.

Save the Children compiled the index by evaluating primary school-aged children not attending school, under-five survival, Grade 1 repetition, female literacy and female fertility.

In the bottom five countries 20 percent of children do not reach age five, and those who do often suffer cognitive and physical impairments limiting their productivity and development, according to the report, “State of the World’s Mothers 2009: Investing in the Early Years”.

Of the bottom 31 countries, 20 are experiencing armed conflict, emerging from conflict or hosting large refugee populations.

Following Cuba and Armenia at the top of the index are Cyprus, Chile and Azerbaijan.

aj/np source.www.irinnews.org

Photo: Nicholas Reader/IRIN

Women and their infants at a maternity hospital in the Niger capital, Niamey (file photo)

DAKAR,  – The number of midwives worldwide would have to more than double to meet Millennium Development Goals of reducing maternal and infant deaths by 2015, according to the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) and World Health Organization on International Day of the Midwife.

Maternal mortality is the “highest health inequity in the world with more than 99 percent of deaths [in pregnancy and childbirth] occurring in the developing world,” World Health Organization (WHO), World Bank, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said in a joint statement. In 2008 the agencies pledged to work with governments to fill the “urgent need for skilled health workers, particularly midwives”, the statement says.

WHO estimates that for the annual 160 million births worldwide it would take an additional 350,000 midwives to ensure that at least 95 percent of births were attended by trained health workers, thereby helping meet MDGs.

ICM estimates that there are 250,000 licensed midwives worldwide, with 13,000 in sub-Saharan Africa. The region had more than half of the world’s maternal deaths during pregnancy and childbirth in 2005, according to WHO’s latest compiled statistics.

Monir Islam, director of WHO’s Making Pregnancies Safer Programme, said governments’ failure to focus on midwifery has been deadly. “Starting in 1987 in an effort to make motherhood safer, countries invested in traditional birthing attendants, which has not reduced maternal and infant mortality.”

He said: “Traditional birthing attendants have their role in ensuring safe motherhood. They have community standing and can promote nutrition, can prepare a woman for childbirth, but at the moment of birthing [they] should bring the woman to a trained health worker.”

He said countries that invested in midwifery and emergency obstetric care, including Thailand and Malaysia, have been able to cut their maternal and infant deaths.

But he noted that midwifery training is still not enough to ensure safe childbirths. “It is also about employment, deployment, retention and giving midwives supplies. What good is a midwife who comes to the clinic every day with no supplies? No gloves? Or those used to do tasks that auxiliary nurses could do?”

A health worker is considered a midwife only after completing a certified midwifery education programme to provide care during pregnancy, labour and the postpartum period, according to ICM.

WHO’s Islam told IRIN that while Malawi has adequate training facilities, the majority of midwives are concentrated in cities while rural areas lack trained health workers.

He added that Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland have good midwife coverage, whereas Francophone Africa countries are lagging. WHO is working with governments to develop midwifery curriculums.

“This will not happen overnight,” said Islam. “But we need to take action.”

pt/np source.www.irinnews.org

Photo: CDC

Image of worm causing schistosomiasis

DAKAR,  – After a donor-funded national schistosomiasis control programme in Mali ended in 1992, the organ-destroying worm disease that affects about 200 million people worldwide (World Health Organization) rebounded within 12 years, according to a recently published medical study. 

The disease can damage the bladder, ureters, kidneys, liver, spleen and intestines.

Even though endemic communities in Mali received intensive treatment and health education on schistosomiasis from 1982-1992, the infection was still as widespread nationwide in 2004 as earlier decades, according to researchers.

Despite the 10-year programme, study leader Archie Clements from Australia’s The University of Queensland said control needs to be delivered even longer – “over a very long time period” – to have a lasting impact.

Since Malian government funding for schistosomiasis ended in 1998, the disease received little attention until the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Schistosomiasis Control Initiative started in 2004.

pt/aj source.www.irinnews.org