Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
Remember
testing your IQ on hunger at the UN World Food Program (WFP) for World Food
Day? Now, how
about testing your IQ on “Maternal health in the world” at Partners in Health (PIH)? Just 3 questions,
and 2 minutes of your time; and for every test taken, fifty cents (US .50 cts)
will be donated to PIH (Partners in Health) to save mothers’ lives! ...At the very least, that should take a bit of
the unfairness out of testing!...
What is PIH (Partners in Health)?
The story of
the people who founded Partners in Health is told in a NY Times bestseller titled Mountains beyond mountains: The quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a
man who would cure the world (Kidder, 2004). In all fairness, one could probably add to
the title of this absolutely wonderful book: “with the help of his best friends”. And then
mention PIH’s three additional co-founders: Ophelia Dahl (also daughter of Roald Dahl, the famed children’s author of such classics
as James and the Giant Peach, Mathilda or Charlie and Chocolate Factory), Dr. Jim Yong Kim (now
President of the World Bank, also selected in 2006 by Time Magazine as
one of the 100 most influential people in the world, among countless additional
very distinguished accolades), Todd McCormack (also president of IMG Media), and
the now deceased Tom White.
PIH was
initially founded in 1987 as a non-profit organization intended to deliver
healthcare in poverty stricken areas of the Central Plateau in Haiti. Twenty-seven years later, in partnerships with
Harvard University, private foundations, non-profits, and the national
governments of many developing countries, PIH operates pioneering and model healthcare
partnership programs in poverty-stricken areas on 4 continents. In particular,
the organization has pioneered model partnership programs for the treatment of
HIV/AIDS and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in places such as Chiapas,
Mexico; the slums of Lima in Peru; the Neno district of Malawi and Lesotho,
South Africa, where it was believed that such care and treatment could not be
delivered. At root, the PIH partnership programs rely on a community-based
system of trained healthcare workers, connected to the larger healthcare systems
and institutions. In the US, PIH is partnered, for example, with the Navajo Nation, Native American COPE (Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment) program for the prevention of chronic diseases.
In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake,
PIH was also instrumental in rebuilding the shattered Haitian healthcare system
with a teaching hospital and center of medical excellence, the Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais, and successfully joined forces to fight a cholera epidemic. This proved to be the culmination, and shining
star, of a model designed to develop top quality healthcare in a
poverty-stricken country, as the teaching hospital has the capacity to generate
its own doctors and nurses, and to provide state of the art technologies where none existed at all. Another PIH partnership also resulted in building the Butaro Hospital, in Rwanda, a teaching
hospital, and model hub of medical excellence for East Africa, which opened in 2011. The hope, now, is to develop such a medical infrastructure of
excellence and teaching in West Africa, in Sierra Leone, Liberia or Guinea,
where the Ebola pandemic is raging, with a long term view of forever preventing the risks of such pandemics
PIH is a
tireless and relentless advocate of health
as human right. And, to a large
extent, PIH has succeeded in securing these rights in many forsaken and
destitute areas, including tuberculosis-infected Russian jails. If “everything
that is wrong in the world” stems from thinking that “some lives matter less”,
as Dr. Farmer believes, then this much is now clearly articulated, and on the
map for “building better”, as former President Clinton puts it.
(FYI - I
have included, in the list of references below, the most important publications authored
by Dr. Farmer, and a Charlie Rose interview on May 16, 2013 with Dr. Farmer, on Repairing the world)
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So, what
about Mothers’ health…?
Figures are daunting on mothers’ health
- World wide, 800 women
die in pregnancy or childbirth everyday of very preventable causes. [UN-WHO, Fact Sheet #348]
- 289,000
women died in childbirth in 2013. And for every woman who dies in childbirth,
there are an estimated 20 more who suffer injury, infection or disease, related
to childbirth or pregnancy, a total of 10 million each year. [US-WHO- Why?]
- 87 percent of the women dying in childbirth are from Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia [UN-WHO, 2014]
- As a direct
consequence of maternal death, about 1 million children are left motherless each
year. These children are more likely to die within 1 to 2 years of their
mother’s death. [US-WHO – Why?]
- Adolescent
girls face a higher rate of complications and deaths as a result of pregnancy
than older women. [UN-WHO –Fact sheet #348]
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So, what did
you score on the PIH Mothers’ Health Quizz? ….Incidentally, October 11, 2014,
was the UN declared International Day of
the Girl Child.
References
Dahl, R. ( 2007 ) James and the Giant Peach Illustrator
Quentin Blake. New York, NY: Puffin-Penguin
Books.
Dahl, R. (2007) Mathilda. Illustrator Quentin
Blake. New York, NY: Puffin-Penguin Books.
Dahl, R. (2007) Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory. Illustrator Quentin Blake. New
York, NY: Puffin-Penguin Books.
Farmer, P. Dr. (2013) To repair the
world: Paul Farmer speaks to the next generation. J. Weigel (Ed.) Foreword
by Bill Clinton. California Series in Public Anthropology. Oakland, CA:
University of California Press.
Farmer, P. Dr. and Fr. G. Gutierrez (2013)
In the company of the poor: Conversations with Dr. G. Gutierrez. Michael
Griffin and Jennie Weiss Block (Eds). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Farmer, P. Dr. , Yong Kim, J. Dr. ,
Kleinman, A. and M. Basilico (Eds.)(2013) Reimagining global health: An
introduction California Series in Public Anthropology. Oakland, CA:
University of California Press.
Farmer, P. Dr. (2010 ) Partner to
the poor: A Paul Farmer reader. Haun Saussy (Ed.). Foreword Tracy Kidder.
Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Farmer, P. Dr., (2007) Women,
poverty and AIDS: Sex, drugs and sexual violence. Margaret Connors and
Janie Simmons (Eds.) Series in Health and Social Justice.
Farmer, P. Dr. (2006) AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the
geography of blame. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Farmer, P. Dr. (2005) The uses of
Haiti. Introduction by Noam Chomsky. Foreword by Jonathan Kozol. Monroe,
ME: Common Courage Press.
Farmer, P. Dr. (2003) Pathologies of
Power: Health, human rights and the new war on the poor. Foreword by
Amartya Sen. California Series in Public Anthropology. Oakland, CA: University
of California Press.
Farmer P. Dr. (2001) Infections and inequalities: The
Modern Plagues. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Kidder, T. (2004) Mountains beyond
mountains: The quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world . New York, NY: Random House.
PIH – Test yourself – re: maternal care
UN-WHO 2014 – Progress Report - Department
of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent health
UN-WHO – Fact Sheet #348 – Maternal Health
UN-WHO – Why do so women still die in
pregnancy or childbirth
Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
