Maz & Kilgore

I’ve been working on Debtonation with Ann Pettifor for several months. For those who don’t know her work, Ann is one of the very few economists who accurately predicted the current global financial meltdown. As early as 2003 she warned of an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis - not exactly a popular position at the time, and she continues to call it right. So check out Debtonation for independent and forthright analysis of the incredible mess we’re in. Here’s an excerpt:

“It is hard to over-state the gravity and extent of the collapse of the global economy. I can barely find the words to fill a blog that I fear you, dear reader, may weary of.  It is even harder to find an economy escaping the carnage, or to avoid politicians dashing for the cover of bail-outs.  But one can still encounter economists confident and chipper in the face of such massive, global destruction – and the threat of sustained economic failure.”

While developing the campaign for mothers, we kept coming back to the question “Why is public awareness currently so low?”, and more specifically, “Why don’t women everywhere know about this issue?” There is clearly a vast and powerful global community ready to be mobilized on behalf of mothers – a worldwide constituency of women, mothers and grandmothers. Women in high-income countries have the potential to play a similar role to the part played by US AIDS activists who directly supported grassroots African advocacy and helped mobilize massive US funding for ARV treatment. There is general agreement that huge untapped reservoirs of public support exist for mothers – they just need to be mobilized. Yet for the last 20 years “Josephine Public” has been almost entirely missing from the maternal advocacy landscape. Why?

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“The standard recommendation to a woman who needs medical attention is, ‘Go to the hospital’ - but in rural parts of India there are so few doctors that this is like telling her, ‘Do nothing.’ We decided to follow Gandhi’s message to go to the villages. Instead of waiting for people to come to us, we found a way to take the care to the people.“  Abhay Bang, SEARCH

More than 50% of mothers in low-income countries still give birth in the home, far from health facilities, medicines and trained professionals .

Why? These women often live in remote and inaccessible rural areas. And even if health facilities and trained professionals are within reach, many women confront insurmountable cultural and religious obstacles in accessing that healthcare and inevitably give birth at home.  Plus, their governments face significant economic challenges, made worse by the exodus of trained medical staff to rich countries.
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In some of the world’s poorest countries, women still die in pregnancy and childbirth at what is essentially the same rate as the Middle Ages. Nature seems to have given odds of around 16 to 1 of successfully making it through pregnancy and childbirth without any medical help or modern advances in hygiene. Unbelievably, women in the poorest countries still face this same risk TODAY when entering each pregnancy. (more…)

A team is coming together to create a new public mobilization campaign for maternal survival. The goals of the campaign are to mobilize women worldwide and provide a clear and credible “ask” supporting life-saving interventions that can be implemented now. We’re incredibly excited to get this effort rolling, and have just begun the first stages of planning.

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