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Speech by International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander at Women Deliver conference on maternal health, 18 October 2007

18 October 2007
 

Douglas Alexander

Jill (Sheffield, of Family Care International) thanks for those warm words of welcome.

It is good to be here with you, and let me begin by echoing our Prime Minister Gordon Brown in welcoming you to London, for this timely and important event.

It is a genuine privilege to welcome so many distinguished women, fellow ministers, human rights activists, NGOs, faith groups, health professionals and economists representing more than 70 countries gathered together, to share experiences and expertise, to learn from others and to pool knowledge to address this pressing crisis.

More lives must be saved

And of course we meet here in London on the twentieth anniversary of the Safe Motherhood Initiative, launched in Kenya back in 1987.

And since then some progress has been made. In 1990 it was estimated that more than 576,000 women died every year during pregnancy, labour or child birth.

By 2005 that figure had been reduced, saving more than 40,000 women’s lives every year.

But we are still a very long way from the target we set ourselves in the UN of saving an additional 430,000 lives every year by 2015.

We know as our Prime Minister has just made clear, but it bears repeating, that every minute, a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth. Ten million women have lost their lives in this way in the past twenty years.

And we also know that 99% of these deaths occur in the developing world. Indeed a woman in Afghanistan or Sierra Leone has a one in six chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. There, in those countries, for women to give the gift of life is so often to risk her own life.

That is something we can address, we must address, and something we know that if we work together we can change.

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Building the political will to improve maternal health

Indeed we know that where we work together to improve maternal health, real success can be achieved.

In Nepal, the UK has provided £20 million to support the Government’s National Safe Motherhood Programme, which is improving maternal health facilities, training doctors and midwives, providing equipment and helping to get women to hospital to give birth. The result? The maternal mortality rate has fallen by at least a fifth over the past ten years.

Because, let us be honest with each other at this gathering, we have the technology to save women’s lives. We have the expertise. We have the money. The question facing us all, as Gordon Brown said, is do we have the political will?

That is why action taken in recent weeks by the international community is so vital – because it demonstrates commitment to improving health systems in developing countries.

And the best evidence demonstrates that improving those health systems is a vital ingredient to improving maternal health. Here in the UK, in September alongside our Prime Minister, I launched the International Health Partnership.

Then as we heard, just a few days later, Prime Minister Stoltenberg of Norway launched the global campaign to meet the Millennium Development Goals on Health.

These most recent initiatives are the early stages of a campaign that must be built upon at this conference and over the coming month and years, to accelerate progress to these health related Millennium Development Goals.

Because, in truth, building effective health services will be vital to tackle maternal mortality. But it will not be sufficient. We must also ensure that health services actually reflect the needs of the women in the societies they serve.

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UK funding to improve health and give women real choices

To improve women’s health, we must improve their rights. The right to education. The right to freedom from the threat of violence. And the right to make informed choices about their health and their family’s health.

That means women designing the services that they also use. Women contributing to the political agenda, setting that agenda, indeed leading that agenda.

The agreement in the UN last week of a new target under the Millennium Development Goals for universal access to reproductive health care represents real progress in getting the importance of this issue recognised. What we need now is the action to meet that target.

That is why today at this conference, and from this platform I am announcing that the UK Government will provide an additional £100 million over the next five years to the United Nations Population Fund. Funding to improve reproductive health and to give women real choices.

To support governments in Africa and South Asia to provide more contraception services and better health care and advice to the girls, women and men who really need it.

Why do we make this investment as the British Government? Because the evidence is overwhelming. We know that £1 million invested in this way could save the lives of 1600 mothers and 22,000 infants. I want our investment of £100 million to have an impact on hundreds of thousands of more lives

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Working together to make history

Twenty years ago, as a student, I was working in a school building project in Eastern Kenya. I’m sure that some of you were in Nairobi, when the world was first challenged to take notice of what had been, until then, the hidden scandal of maternal mortality.

Today, twenty years on, it is a scandal that so little has changed. Each generation robbed of 10 million mothers, sisters, wives and daughters.

That is why the British Government believes this conference is so important. Over the next three days, the studies and research that will be presented here at Women Deliver will help provide the insight we need to ensure our action is well directed, and has the most benefit in improving the health of women and children.

The personal stories that will be told here by women and girls will give us the further determination – if any were needed – we need together to act as the international community.

And the working sessions will provide the opportunity to share knowledge, expertise and experience from around the world, from those who tackle this problem as politicians, as doctors, as aid workers or as researchers.

For in the coming days, weeks and months we must work together to ensure that in 20 years time, when our successors gather, they are not mourning another 10 million women and asking: “If they knew what needed to be done, and had the power to do it – how did they allow this to happen?”

The message from this conference must be this. We know what needs to be done. We have the skills. We have the science. We have the resources. And yes, we have the will. History will not be allowed to repeat itself. Because together, history can be made here.

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