Safe Motherhood: A Review - Family Care International

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• Family Care International: Family Care
International (FCI) was one of the earliest
NGOs to situate maternal health as central
to its organizational mission. At the safe
motherhood conference in Nairobi, FCI
played a critical role in setting the agenda,
coordinating the meeting logistics, and
documenting and disseminating the
conference findings. In its role as secretariat
to the Safe Motherhood Inter-Agency
Group (IAG, 1987–2004), FCI helped shape
the global landscape for safe motherhood;
the materials produced with and on behalf
of the IAG, as well as the conferences it
organized, influenced the policy agenda at
the global and national levels, set technical
priorities, and raised awareness around this
public health tragedy.
• MotherCare (a USAID-funded project
implemented by John Snow International):
From 1990 to 2000, MotherCare was
USAID’s flagship project on maternal
health (subsequently superseded by the
Maternal & Neonatal (MNH) Program and
ACCESS). With the aim of improving the
health, nutrition, and survival of women
and newborns through a continuum of care,
it provided evidence-based programmatic
approaches through needs assessments,
monitoring and evaluation, and policy
dialogue. The lessons and experiences
gleaned from MotherCare’s work in over 25
countries had a significant influence on the
design, planning, and implementation of
safe motherhood programs in the decades
to come.
• The Safe Motherhood Inter-Agency Group:
Founded in 1987 following the Nairobi
conference, the Safe Motherhood Inter-
Agency Group was launched in an effort
to redress the gross neglect of maternal
mortality and morbidity in the priorities of
development agencies, within the national
plans of developing country governments,
and in the mindsets of the general public.
Bringing together UN agencies and
civil society partners, the IAG was an
unprecedented partnership of organizations
united by a common goal: to halve the
maternal mortality ratio. While its impact
on the global SMI is difficult to determine in
quantitative terms, it is clear from informal
feedback and a general assessment of
trends that the IAG has made substantial
inroads for maternal health on the policy,
advocacy, and technical fronts.
• Columbia University, Prevention of
Maternal Mortality Program: From 1988 to
1996 researchers at Columbia University,
New York, collaborated with a network of
eleven multi-disciplinary teams in West
Africa (based in Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra
Leone), called the Prevention of Maternal
Mortality (PMM) Network. These teams
carried out operations-research projects
on maternal mortality, collected a body of
information on the design and evaluation
of such programs, and produced analytical
work that significantly influenced program
design (such as the “three delays” model,
which analyzed the factors that prevent
women from receiving essential care, and
their focus on the importance of emergency
care for life-threatening complications).
Their experiences have provided the safe
motherhood community with solid evidence
on the types of interventions that have the
greatest impact on reducing maternal death
and disability.