A summit to save mothers

World Population Day is being observed tomorrow, July 11, with the theme “universal access to reproductive health services.”

The observance dates back to 1987 when the world’s population reached a milestone 5 billion. Since then, at least 2 billion more people have been born, a rather alarming statistic considering that the world’s population breached the 1 billion mark only in the year 1810.

Among the activities to mark World Population Day is the holding of “The London Summit,” jointly sponsored by the government of the United Kingdom and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It gathers leaders from governments around the world, the private sector, civil society and health groups to “revitalize global political commitments, including from governments, that enable more women to use modern contraceptives.”

A goal of the summit is to enable some 120 million more women to obtain access to family planning resources by 2020. The United Nations estimates that 800 women around the world die every day due to causes related to pregnancy or childbirth. Another 222 million are believed to lack adequate access to reproductive health care, with an estimated 75 million unintended pregnancies each year. A consequence of the summit then, would be not just making contraception more available to more women, but also saving the lives of more women who would otherwise die because they couldn’t access health care while they are pregnant or during their deliveries; as well as ensuring the survival of babies born too soon after the birth of an older sibling, while their mothers are at a less than optimal condition for safe childbirth.

Family planning would also ensure that a couple would have only the number of children they plan for or have the capability to feed, nurture and educate.

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Tomorrow’s observance also comes at a time when prospects for the passage here of the Reproductive Health bill grow increasingly dim, what with a mid-term campaign and election drawing near.

This seems particularly ironic, considering the recent news that our maternal mortality rate—the number of mothers dying due to pregnancy and childbirth—has risen from an estimated 162 per 100,000 live births in 2009 to 221 per 100,00 live births this year. In simpler terms, that means that the toll of maternal deaths has risen from 11 to 12 mothers dying each day, bucking an international trend even among the most impoverished countries of falling maternal death rates.

Some groups opposing the RH bill have questioned the veracity of the maternal mortality statistics, culled from regular demographic health surveys. But as I’ve said before, even if that number falls to one, that’s still one unnecessary death too many.

So what do we do about the number of mothers dying? The organizers of the London Summit obviously believe it starts with making reproductive health services more available to more women and men. In addition, they obviously believe that governments must back their public commitments with official action, specifically by making money and services available where and when these are needed, and making sure that the women who need them most get the health services they deserve.

Here in our own backyard, we can lobby even harder for the passage of the RH bill, and tie the votes for or against it to the congress members’ and senators’ prospects for reelection. Let’s make a political issue of the lives of mothers and babies.

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Alarming too is the news that the Philippines has been named one of only seven countries in the world listed by UNAIDS with rising HIV rates.

Once described as a country with a “low and slow” HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Philippines now reports a steady rise in the number of new cases, with the estimated 27,840 cases this year expected to climb to almost 36,000 by 2015.

A wire agency reports that a factor in this rapid rise is almost certainly continued discrimination against gay men, with people living with HIV “ostracized by their communities and even by doctors.” Among the forms of discrimination cited by the report were “people being tested without their knowledge, test results being leaked and infected people being detained, quarantined and even forced to leave their homes.”

The resulting “stigma” has also led to people living with HIV to strive to keep their health status secret; or to refusing outright to have themselves tested. Apparently, they deem it preferable to live with the uncertainty rather than to confront the reality of the disease. This is unfortunate because ignorance can also result in inaction, at a time when antiretroviral drugs are available and proving to be highly effective.

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The growing spread of HIV/AIDS, and the lack of official action and attention here are ironic considering that in other parts of the world medical advances have made the diagnosis and control of HIV/AIDS easily manageable.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has already approved an HIV test that is “as easy to use as a home pregnancy kit.” The OraQuick test uses a mouth swab and is able to reveal results in 20 to 40 minutes.

Said the report: “Getting an infected person onto antiretroviral drugs lowers by as much as 96 percent the chance that he or she will transmit the virus to someone else, so testing and treatment have become crucial to prevention. About 20 percent of the 1.2 million infected Americans do not know they have the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and about 50,000 more get infected each year.”

I’m afraid it will take much more than a home test kit to slow down the rise in the number of HIV/AIDS cases here. Perhaps a test of our attitudes toward gays could help.