When women have adequate access to care, their chance of having a healthy pregnancy and delivery goes up exponentially. The World Health Organization reports that a woman’s lifetime risk of dying from complications in childbirth or pregnancy is about 1 in 7 in Niger and 1 in 48,000 in Ireland.
Many factors limit women’s access to care. Scarcity of resources—human, financial, technological, and medical material—and limited access to education and physical proximity to care are among the many challenges. For 60 years, Direct Relief has worked to infuse essential medical resources into in-country systems so more people can receive better quality care. In recent years, these efforts have focused more intensely on expanding and enhancing health services for women and children, including prenatal care, safe delivery, care for low-birthweight babies, and access to basic medicines and supplies.
In 2005, Direct Relief formed a strategic partnership with Marie Stopes International (MSI), a leading reproductive health service nonprofit organization with facilities serving five million people around the world. Direct Relief now supplies MSI clinics and outreach programs in 15 countries, assisting women and children in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Financial support from individuals and organizations has joined with support from corporate partners seeking to improve the health and lives of women and children. The Abbott Fund and Direct Relief’s partnership to support the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia, where 45 percent of children are malnourished, provides nutritional products essential for patients and also to establish an on-site garden and demonstration kitchen where families learn to grow, prepare, and eat nutritious foods to avoid preventable malnutrition. The company also has provided major support through Direct Relief for the Afghan Institute of Learning, a dynamic, women-run organization which provides education and care for women and children at its four clinics throughout Afghanistan.
In Ghana, BD has joined with Direct Relief and committed financial support, laboratory and other medical equipment and supplies, and technical assistance and training by employee volunteer teams. The collaboration has boosted the capacity and quality of services provided by the Maranatha Health Services, a 30-bed facility in Kumasi, Ghana, serving 300 patients a month. The clinic offers prenatal exams, nutritional counseling for pregnant women, labor and delivery services, post-natal care, and treatment of common illnesses affecting children. The clinic also emphasizes preventive health and health education, including child-care classes for new mothers. Since 2004, Direct Relief has provided Maranatha Maternity Clinic with more than $800,000 (wholesale) in medical material aid.
In sub-Saharan Africa, only 40 percent of women are attended by a health professional during childbirth. In building access for essential care, Direct Relief has financed and equipped four surgical theaters costing up to $50,000 each in Malawi, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to enable safe cesarean-section deliveries (which reduce the risk of HIV transmission in childbirth) and other surgeries.
Sometimes small interventions make a big difference. Prenatal vitamins—which cost $13 for one year’s supply—help prevent gestational hypertension and eclampsia (caused by a lack of calcium and magnesium) and severe iron-deficiency anemia, which kills 100,000 women each year. Direct Relief provides these basic items to partner organizations and is seeking new partnerships with vitamin manufacturers to expand availability of these low-cost, high-impact supplements.
More than 130 of Direct Relief’s international partners provide a broad range of preventive and curative services for women. We hope to support them all more expansively in the years to come.