Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

civil society, the private sector, and affected communities.
The fund has attracted $5.5 billion in financing
through 2008. The United States is its largest contributor,
having pledged more than $2 billion to the
fund through 2008, 35 percent of all pledges to date. It
already has disbursed almost $1 billion.
The Global Fund supports a number of projects
that benefit women directly. One of these is the Kenya
Network of Women with AIDS (KENWA).
KENWA offers counseling, home-based care, and
psychosocial support to 2,300 women and some 700
orphans in deprived slum areas of Nairobi. Its six centers
serve as information, dissemination, and walk-in
counseling centers.
Prevention of Mother-to-Child
Transmission of HIV/AIDS
Adding to the tragedy of HIV/AIDS infection is
the potential for an HIV-positive mother to transmit
the HIV virus to her newborn child. In the absence of
any treatment, an estimated 15 to 30 percent of infected
mothers transmit HIV during pregnancy and
delivery, and 10 to 20 percent through breast milk.
In launching the U.S. International Mother and
Child HIV Prevention Initiative in 2002, President
Bush said: “One of our best opportunities for progress
against AIDS lies in preventing mothers from passing
on the HIV virus to their children. Worldwide, close
to 2,000 babies are infected with HIV every day, during
pregnancy, birth, or through breastfeeding. Most
of those infected will die before their fifth birthday.”
This initiative, now integrated within the
President’s Emergency Plan, seeks to increase the
availability of HIV preventive care, including shortterm
anti-retroviral prophylaxis for pregnant women,
and to improve access to basic health counseling and
care to as many pregnant women as possible. To date,
the U.S. government has set aside more than $288
million for mother-to-child transmission programs.
Under the President’s Emergency Plan, for
instance, the U.S. government is providing drug therapy
and intensive counseling to prevent mother-tochild
transmission of HIV. In fact, in just 18 months,
U.S.-funded partners have trained nearly 15,000
health workers and built capacity at over 900 different
health-care sites to enhance care of pregnant women
and prevent mother-to-child transmission. The services
include: HIV counseling and testing, short-course
antiretroviral treatment during delivery and early
infancy, support for safe infant-feeding practices, and
voluntary family-planning counseling and referral.
In each of the host countries, a ministry of health
or equivalent governmental structure, local nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), including faithbased
organizations, and international agencies partner
with U.S. agencies, such as the Office of the
Global AIDS Coordinator in the State Department,
USAID, and the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS), to implement these services
and ensure they adhere to a set of agreed-upon standards
for implementation. Because communities play a
vital role in implementing preventive programs as
well, the U.S. government provides funds to community
organizations—in Rwanda, for example—that
reach out to pregnant women to increase awareness
and acceptance of practices and programs that can prevent
the transmission of HIV to newborns.
Reducing Childbirth Complications
and Maternal Mortality
Complications during pregnancy and birth claim
the lives of more than half a million women each year.
Ninety-eight percent of these deaths occur in developing
countries. Maternal morbidity and mortality affect
not only women, but also their families, the lives of
young children, and society in general. The complications
contribute significantly to chronic underdevelopment
in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and
South Asia. Nearly 15 percent of pregnancies in these
regions involve potentially life-threatening complications,
including postpartum hemorrhage, infection,
obstructed labor, and complications of unsafe abortions.
Giving women access to skilled birth attendants
and timely and appropriate obstetric care can avert
serious long-term problems and death.
This is why USAID focuses its maternal mortality
prevention strategies on strengthening the capacity
Top, a mother cradles her child in a hospital in India. Center
left, children in the village of La Union, Lempira, Honduras,
receive food donated by the World Food Program. The United
States is the largest donor to the WFP. Center right, an Iraqi
doctor in Baghdad prepares to vaccinate a girl to protect her
from several diseases, including measles. Bottom, midwives
conduct a training session for health workers in a rural health
center in Thee Kone village, Myanmar.
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