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MDG5 Meshwork Newsletter
November 2010
This is the internal newsletter of the MDG5 Meshwork for Improving Maternal Health, brought to you by the Linking & Learning team. This newsletter will keep partners and interested up-to-date on the latest news and progress in the different projects (the Private-Public Partnerships, PPPs), meetings and relevant new publications.
The MDG5 Meshwork for Improving Maternal Health is a cross-sector, cross-disciplinary network of organizations based in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and the Netherlands. The purpose of the Meshwork is to develop innovative and effective partnerships that contribute to the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 5, to improve maternal health.
Highlights from the MDG5 Meshwork Projects:
1. Launch of the MDG5 Meshwork website
2. Global Maternal Health Conference 2010
3. Maternal Health Portal
4. Twinning between the Netherlands and Sierra Leone
5. Mother's Night's Signatures for Improving Maternal Health
6. Strengthening of midwives and nurses in Afghanistan
Did you miss a newsletter? You can read previous issues here:
Newsletter 1 November 2009
Newsletter 2 March 2010
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Highlights from the Projects
Launch of the MDG5 Meshwork website
The old website of the MDG5 Meshwork has been updated by the Linking & Learning team and the new website can be visited at www.mdg5-meshwork.org. The website aims to inform the general public on maternal health, the Meshwork and the Meshwork projects. MDG5 Meshwork project partners with an account have access to project documents, contact information of the other partners , and have the ability to discuss topics and issues on a forum.
All the project partners will be invited soon by their project leader to create an account. If you have any question, please contact the Linking & Learning team by sending an email to Merel Martens at info@mdg5-meshwork.org.
Global Maternal Health Conference
From August 30 to September 1, 2010 the Global Maternal Health Conference (GMHC) took place in New Delhi, India. More than 600 maternal health specialists gathered at the first technical international conference devoted exclusively to maternal health, which was hosted by the Maternal Health Task Force and Engender Health and The Public Health Foundation of India, and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The conference aimed to increase consensus and coordination around the evidence, programs, and advocacy needed to advance maternal health.
The Linking & Learning team initiated the composition of a panel were project partners would be able to present their work, experiences and findings. As a result a panel was put together with the titel 'Promising Interventions in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan' which was hosted by Korrie de Koning (Royal Tropical Institute, KIT) and contained presentations of Kathy Herschderfer (KIT), Patrick Walker (University of Sierra Leone) and Mohammad Naseem (HealthNet TPO). Please find a report here with highlights of the conference in general and a summary on the presentations and panel discussion in more detail. This report is only accessible to project partners of the Meshwork with an account on the website www.mdg5-meshwork.org.
Maternal Health Portal
In the course of the year the Maternal Health Portal has been launched by the Linking & Learning team. The information portal shares examples of practical projects and initiative that have been undertaken with the explicit objective of contributing to MDG5. Many interesting articles have been published such as the e-publication by ICRW 'Targeting Poverty and Gender INequality to Improve Maternal Health' examining the ways in which poverty and gender inequality impact maternal mortality by creating barriers to maternal health care access and utilization or the briefing paper by IIMMHR on human rights based approached to reduce maternal mortality.
At the moment the Information and Library Services department of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) who developed the portal is evaluating all its information portals. They would be very grateful for your input in a survey about the Maternal Health portal. Your feedback will help them to better understand your needs and improve their services. The survey will only take 5-10 minutes and can be accessed here. All participants in the survey will take part in a prize draw to win a book: Revisiting Gender Training - The making and remaking of gender knowledge by Mukhopadhyay, M. & Wang, F. (eds) 2007, Amsterdam: Kit Publishers/Oxfam.
Twinning between the Netherlands and Sierra Leone
Strengthening of the Sierra Leone Midwives Association (SLMA) is one of the objectives within the Sierra Leone Public-Private Partnership. In order to achieve this aim a twinning programme between SLMA and the Royal Dutch Organisation of Midwives (KNOV) and a twinning between individual midwives in Sierra Leone and the Netherlands are set up.
As part of the SLMA-KNOV twinning, KNOV facilitated a workshop for their counterpart in Sierra Leone which provided a platform for the midwives to start looking at themselves as a professional group and realizing how much power they could have as an organised group. Watch a short movie on the workshop here! The twinning between 50 midwives from the Netherlands (25) and Sierra Leone (25) aims to create understanding and to share knowledge between the two groups. Also both the Dutch and Sierra Leonean midwives are raising funds to finance attendance of all midwives to the conference of International Confederation of Midwives(ICM) in Durban, South Africa, wich is taking place in June 2011. Several activities are initiated to raise funds, such as organizing a sports week or selling cloths and bags, while attention is asked for the problems around maternal health in developing countries. The twins are in contact through e-mail or by sending text message and will only meet face-to-face in Durban next year.
Mother's Night's Signatures for Improving Maternal Health!
On October 5 all signatures that were collected during the Mother's Night campaign (www.moedernacht.nl) were offered to the 'More Party Initiative HIV/AIDS & SRHR' in the Netherlands. This initiative aims to stimulate collaboration and sharing of information between parliamentarians and technical experts in the fields of HIV/AIDS and SRHR.
During the Mother's Night campaign 7.494 signatures were collected asking attention for better maternal health care services and education. Signatures were offered to the MPI HIV/AIDS & SRHR of the Parliament. Ewout Irrgang (SP, Socialist Party), Stientje van Veldhoven (D66, Democrats) and Sjoera Dikkers (PvdA, Social Democrats) were present. First Hilde Kroes (World Population Foundation) gave a short presentation and asked for persistent attention of the Parliament for maternal health and insisted not to cut back on SRHR. Afterwards the parliamentarians received the suitcases with signatures.
Another step on the road of improving maternal health worldwide!
Strengthening of midwives and nurses in Afghanistan
Two new, important, developments are made in the Afghanistan Public Private Partnership on the reduction of maternal mortality in Afghanistan.
Supported by KNOV (represented by Anna Krüger) the Afghan Midwives Association (AMA) started to establish the Afghanistan Midwives and Nurses Council. Given the fact that the Afghan health sector is still evolving, AMA feels that now is the time where midwives and nurses can build their roots in the system. AMA choose to establish this council to give nurses and midwives a common platform where they can raise their voices for the acknowledgement of their professions. By the beginning of 2011, ICM will join KNOV in strengthening AMA. According to the timeline the council will be presented during the annual congress of AMA in May 2011. For more information on this council please contact Feroza Mushtari (AMA) at fmushtari@jhpiego.net.
The Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) visited Afghanistan in May this year. From this first explorative visit KIT developed a research proposal for the coming two years. This proposal will be shared soon with the involved organizations in the Afghanistan project and the MDG5 Meshwork of Improving Maternal Health. The proposed focus of the action research in Afghanistan is to investigate how ‘social and cultural factors affect the services provided to women by community midwives and women’s experience of those services’. For more information on this research proposal please contact Christine Hunter (KIT) at C.Hunter@kit.nl.
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