Be a Hero in Five Minutes or Less With the United Nations Population Fund
The United Nations Population Fund is offering kits with essentials like a razor to cut the umbilical cord of a woman who’s given birth and a plastic sheet for the mom to lie on. The organization provides women’s health care and promotes the rights of women around the world. It’s dedicated to building American support for the work of UNFPA and to restoring the financial contribution to the organization. The U.S. Committee for UNFPA, now Americans for UNFPA was founded in 1998.
According to their website, investments in reproductive health care save women’s lives and slow the spread of HIV/AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Roughly 201 million women in low-income countries would use safe, effective birth control methods if they were available according to UNFPA literature. There is evidence that fewer than 20 countries have family planning services routinely available to women at reasonable cost.
“I don’t understand why insurance companies will pay for other medications but not birth control,” said a single mom. Contraceptive use is only 25 percent in Africa compared to nearly 65 percent in Asia, and 70 percent in Latin America and Western countries. As many as 50 percent of pregnancies are unplanned and three percent are unwanted. Meeting the existing demand for family planning services would reduce maternal deaths and injuries by 20 percent or more.
Increase access to health services has resulted in women having about half as many children as they had in the 1960s. Due in large part by UNFPA, family planning has increased globally from 55 percent to roughly 61 percent of married couples in the last ten years, according to UNFPA records. Every minute a woman dies in childbirth somewhere in the world – 520,000 deaths each year – and almost all of them are preventable.
Even with today’s technology some women have died of Preclamsia in childbirth, a condition I experienced while in labor in August 2000. The doctor had to do an emergency C-section to safely deliver my daughter. In the old days before C-sections had been invented I would have died. Up to 15 percent of pregnant women experience potentially fatal complications – 20 million each year. Approximately five percent of pregnant women – 7 million women – experience complications that require surgery, most often a C-section, and many are without access to emergency obstetretic care.
If I hadn’t been living in a maternity home at the time I wouldn’t have had this privilege. More than 60 percent of maternal deaths take place during delivery or in the immediate post-partum period. For more information go to americansforunfpa.org/humanitarianrelief.
