Mothers Day is only a few days away but for many, that reality has been snatched and all they are left with is a painful memory. I understand giving birth is one of the most painful and beautiful experience a woman will ever go through in life. An interesting oxymoron if you ask me but I have no idea and cannot back this up from a personal point of view. I have never been pregnant or been in labour and was asked to push, while my husband silently wished he could run away as I squeezed the life out of his fingers. But I have friends with children and have heard their stories…given the opportunity, some of them would do it again because they enjoy being mothers and the satisfaction of seeing their children grow compares to nothing out there.
In different parts of the world, having a child could be a death sentence due to the lack of medical care. It seems there are a lot of things many of us in the west take for granted until we hear other people’s stories. That’s when we begin to appreciate what we have and that we have got it good. That is not to put a smoke screen over the fact that we can always do better with what we have but at the same time, we should be grateful. In Africa for example, a continent with one of the highest maternal mortality death rate in the world, the fact that pregnant women have no access to the most basic of healthcare, not even primary healthcare means they find themselves in dire circumstances when pregnant.
In the Youtube video below, which is subtitled, you hear women talking about their hopes for their unborn children. It would be a joy if they all have their babies and are able to see them grow up to achieve all they envisioned for them.
The next video is the story of a man, who lost his wife during childbirth because no one could help. A very sad story…
There are so many initiatives with the focal aim of helping to reduce the continuous rise of maternal mortality in the world. AMREF is one of such with majority of its operations in Africa. This year, it wants to raise awareness about the difficulties faced by women in the poorest communities of Africa.
It is estimated that over 280,000 mothers die yearly and unnecessarily in pregnancy and childbirth because they lack basic medical care. It is the aim of AMREF to change this disturbing trend and ensure no woman dies while giving life to another human being.
For this purpose, AMREF has teamed up with the creative agency BBH, and created a simple way to raise awareness and help save lives – the ‘Status of Africa: Mother’s Day’ campaign. This innovative application allows users to choose a real African mother or midwife AMREF works with, to share their Facebook status or Twitter account with for 5 days. The app then automatically updates their status twice a day with their chosen African mother or midwife.
AMREF has gone further than the midwife it works with and is also asking people to donate their Facebook status, profile picture or Twitter stream to AMREF for Mother’s Day, 3rd April 2011. You can also raise awareness by tweeting about the campaign and including the hash-tag #StatusofAfrica to support AMREF’s aim to train more midwives in Africa, who will in turn help to save more lives. Grace Mukasa, CEO of AMREF UK, said in the course of her career, a midwife will save a thousand lives. “This is why we are raising awareness of the importance of midwives – they are the key to their communities’ health.”
With your help, we can have more stories of mothers that were saved than those who died. So, lend your voice, your Facebook and Twitter status to a good initiative, even if it is for one day. It won’t hurt to help out.
To find out more about AMREF, go to: AMREF
