Skip to main content

Maternal Health Awareness Day

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists observes January 23rd as Maternal Health Awareness Day. In the US alone, over 60% of maternal deaths are preventable. The theme for this year’s Maternal Health Awareness Day 2022 was Adding Up to Maternal Health - highlighting the countless factors that can work together to improve maternal health.

Through this visual series, we build awareness on maternal health and spotlight the factors that add up to improve maternal health - from prevention and identification of high risk pregnancies, to labor room management and postpartum care.

1. Prevention and early action for improved outcomes

Iron deficiency is one of the most common problems that particularly affects pregnant women. Left untreated, it can lead to anemia, reduced birth weights and reduced gestation periods. Early protection and prevention can drastically improve maternal health outcomes, and the Antara Foundation trains frontline workers with essential skills to identify and manage iron deficiency in a timely manner.

2. Training frontline health workers on important MNCHN themes

We also train frontline health workers to identify and manage High Risk Pregnancies (HRP), where there is a higher chance of health problems for the mother or her baby. Frontline health workers are trained to look for HRP risk factors like high blood pressure or anemia, patient’s history, age, and to prioritize care and services. Comprehensive training in-classroom and in-the-field builds the knowledge and skills of frontline workers on essential maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition (MNCHN) themes.

The capacity building program in Chhindwara District in Madhya Pradesh, India saw 40%+ improved knowledge scores for identification and management of high risk pregnancy over 2019-21. 

3. Continuous quality improvement for patient safety

The continuous improvement of healthcare quality at delivery points is another factor that significantly improves maternal health outcomes. Our Nurse Mentoring and Facility Enhancement programs help train birthing nurses and enhance labor room facilities, to ensure safe deliveries for mothers in rural India. The training covers essential childbirth procedures, including various labor room protocols, and is delivered through innovative teaching methods (e.g., simulation-based tools, virtual knowledge sharing). Practical hand holding and regular refreshers reinforce learning.4. Impact story of our nurse mentoring program

Meet Radha, a Nurse Mentor at the Antara Foundation, and learn about the impact of our Nurse Mentoring program in reducing maternal deaths. She trains midwives and frontline health workers, supporting them to build skills and confidence to handle complications during childbirth.

5. Our impact in numbers: improving Rajasthan’s Maternal health

Our interventions in Rajasthan, India have had a significant impact in improving the state's maternal health. They have been scaled across all 46,000 villages in the state by the government, impacting the lives of many mothers and children. Our current program in Madhya Pradesh is on track to have similar strong outcomes in the state.

6. The global maternal health crisis

To highlight the urgency of the world’s maternal mortality crisis, we focus on global maternal mortality rates. Although maternal mortality rates (MMRs) are high across the world, inequalities in availability and access to quality healthcare contribute to significantly higher MMRs in lower and middle income countries as compared to the rest of the world. Most maternal deaths are preventable, as solutions to prevent or manage complications are well-known. Our goal is to make these solutions accessible to the most marginalized women in rural India, and deliver them at a large scale.

7. Towards a brighter future - progress made towards reducing global maternal mortality

We conclude on a hopeful note - the world has made significant progress towards achieving the #SDG3 target (UN Sustainable Development Goals) to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to fewer than 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

However, despite maternal mortality declining, there is still progress to be made, especially in lower income countries. If maternal deaths were as rare as they are in the healthiest countries, we could save nearly 300,000 mothers each year.




Comments

  1. CharlesebenSeptember 30, 2022 at 5:56 AM

    A gynecologists in Chicago is a doctor who specializes in female reproductive health. They diagnose and treat issues realated to the female reproductive tract. This includes the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries and breasts. Thanks for share this useful information.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One month into my apprenticeship

Aditi Revankar. Frontline workers. I would say, frontline women. Women. In purple. An ASHA. In red. An AWW. In green and white. An ANM. Together, the AAA*. Three frontline women responsible for the delivery of public health services to the masses of India. Chourai. Sausar. Bicchua. Tamia. Mokhed. One-month in, I had been to each of the blocks in which we are directly intervening. I went with the respective Program Officers (PO) in charge. Paras (the team lead), Prerna, Yogesh, Harhini, Shankar. Also, with Soumya, our nurse mentor, who travels to all blocks for capacity building. They, the skilled practitioners, me, the apprentice. An anganwadi worker in her place of work When I got to Chhindwara, the initial village mapping process was largely finished. We were now chasing down the last few frontline women, who hadn’t yet sent in their village maps; the ones that necessitated that we pay them a visit in person. The village maps are integral to the AAA platform, a flagship Antara Foun
4 comments
Read more

Heroes of social change: rural India’s ASHA and Anganwadi workers

In my recent field visit to Madhya Pradesh’s Barwani district, my colleagues introduced me to three most resilient women. One of them works as an Accredited Social Health Activist, known as a village ASHA and two are Anganwadi Workers (AWW) who are primarily in charge of nutrition and well-being of children under five. All three had two things in common – a childhood brush with polio, and the unstoppable courage to defy the odds. Life had dealt each of them a difficult hand before their second birthdays. Prior to when the Polio vaccine became widely available in India, all three women became victims of this debilitating disease. Each of them remembers getting a high fever, followed by paralysis, severe for one of them, milder, yet crippling for the other two. When I heard what daunting adversities these three women had surmounted and saw the courage and drive with which they were helping other women and children in their communities despite their own struggles, I felt that I must share
1 comment
Read more

In Pursuit Of Stories: Experiences From The First Month Of The Fellowship

Rithika Sangameshwaran A Community Health Centre (CHC) the third point of contact in the rural public health system “The maternal mortality rate (MMR) of India is 167 per 100,000 live births and the infant mortality rate (IMR) is 34 per 1000 live births. These are important statistics and you must know them”, the professor instructed a class of about forty listless students aspiring to be public health professionals. I dutifully made a note of those numbers and kept memorising until they became embedded in my head. After all, these are important statistics a public health professional must know. But the thing with statistics is that they are just numbers. Although undoubtedly important numbers, they also make it easy to overlook that there are people- real people behind these numbers. In my opinion, these evolving statistics, while extremely instructive, fail to capture stories. Maybe that is why they are forgettable. I believe that it is always the stories one remembers,
3 comments
Read more