20 Years Making Pregnancy Safer

For the majority of the world's women, pregnancy and childbirth are fraught with risks. Each year, almost 530,000 women die from pregnancy-related causes, and millions more suffer injuries or develop life-long disabilities. Ninety-nine percent of these women live in the developing world. In 1987, experts, development professionals and policy makers gathered in Nairobi to inaugurate the Safe Motherhood Initiative. The impact and the progress of the Safe Motherhood Initiative are described in the Safe Motherhood: A Review, the newest FCI report.

Raising Awareness and Building Commitment

Globally and regionally, FCI works to focus attention on maternal mortality, forge consensus around proven strategies, and accelerate action to address the problem. FCI was one of the first - and is still one of the few - international NGOs to place maternal health at the center of its mission. As the secretariat of the Safe Motherhood Inter-Agency Group (1987-2004), FCI worked with a range of international agencies to raise global awareness about safe motherhood, define goals and programmatic priorities for the initiative, stimulate research, mobilize resources, and share information on how to make pregnancy and childbirth safer. Currently, as a co-chair of the Board for the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), FCI continues to advocate for increased commitment to and resources for safe motherhood and newborn health.

In Latin America, FCI is an active member and promoter of several successful national coalitions working to improve safe motherhood, as well as the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Task Force on Maternal Mortality Reduction. In Africa, FCI is a member of the Africa Regional Reproductive Health Task Force, which is working to accelerate reductions in maternal and newborn mortality rates throughout the region.

Improving Access to Maternal Health Services

Around the globe, FCI is helping to ensure that all women have access to good-quality maternal health care. A special focus of our work is improving women's access to skilled care throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. In addition, FCI is focused on improving women's access to comprehensive family planning information, counseling, and services; safe abortion services, where legal; and post-abortion care. FCI also works to ensure that young women and adolescents have access to sexuality education and youth-friendly reproductive health services so that they can prevent early childbearing and its accompanying risks.

Identifying New Technological Solutions for Maternal Health Problems

FCI is working to advance new technologies that have the potential to dramatically improve maternal health outcomes in poor, rural settings in the developing world. FCI is collaborating with Gynuity Health Projects, on a new initiative to evaluate misoprostol as an alternative therapy for preventing and treating postpartum hemorrhage, which kills more than 350 women around the world each day. This effort will yield much-needed data on the efficacy of a specific regimen of misoprostol so that regulatory approval for the drug can be obtained in countries around the world. The new Misoprostol for Postpartum Hemorrhage Information Kit, which includes a detailed project description, is now available in our Publications section.