News

August 28, 2006

A Message from Liya to the WHO

WHO Regional Committee for Africa
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentleman,

I would like to thank the Minister of Health, Dr Tedros Adhanom and WHO Acting Director-General Anders Nordstrom for inviting me to be here with you this morning. I am honored to be here during such an important time for Africa, as you prepare to discuss how your countries will move forward with the goals set by governments and agencies at the World Health Assembly.

As Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and a native of Ethiopia, I feel privileged to be a spokesperson for so many young women and their babies. I am here to remind you that we must continue to strive towards achieving the goals set out by the Millennium Declaration, to prevent maternal and newborn mortality and to promote safe pregnancies and motherhood. Safe motherhood remains a distant hope throughout our continent. Maternal morbidity, HIV through pregnancy and child survival are at their highest rates in decades. Close to half a million children die from preventable causes in Ethiopia alone each year and nearly 6 million under fives die annually in Africa.

These deaths are a direct result of the serious defects in the social, cultural and economic background as well as inadequacies in existing health services. Over 60% of women are not assisted at birth in Africa. All the major direct and indirect causes of maternal death are known. They are unsafe abortion, anemia, eclampsia, hemorrhage, obstructed labor, and HIV/AIDS and malaria in pregnancy.

In certain places, harmful traditional practices contribute significantly to maternal death. Severe and life-threatening conditions resulting from some of these pregnancy-related complications are chronic pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and obstetric fistula. WHO will launch its Obstetric Fistula manual at the end of this week and I am happy that I will be able to participate in that launch and support the dissemination of the manual to rural villages.

My hope is that this manual will not only help cure the hundreds of thousands of existing fistula patients, but also prevent all future fistula incidents from happening by making sure that every woman has access to skilled care during pregnancy and child birth. This will guarantee not only the end of fistula once and for all, but also help in reducing the tragic and unnecessary death of a mother and her child.

In partnership with UNICEF, I will be traveling this week to poorly developed sanitation areas. I will visit regions affected by the floods as well as therapeutic feeding units where malnutritioned mothers and children are receiving treatment.

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