UNFPA’s Work to Save Mothers’ Lives Featured in New Series on Global Health

NEW YORK — UNFPA’s work to promote maternal health in humanitarian emergencies will be prominently featured on the first programme in a new ABC News series that examines the health issues that disproportionately afflict the world's poorest people.

The series, Be the Change: Save a Life kicks off Friday 17 December at 10 pm EST and continues throughout 2011. Led by World News anchor Diane Sawyer and ABC News Chief Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser, the series will include reporting from all ABC News anchors across all broadcasts and platforms.

From pregnant women to newborns, children and adults, the programme will examine six of the world’s top health problems, and share simple and practical ways the American audience can make an immediate difference.

On Friday’s show, ABC anchor Diane Sawyer will compare a maternity ward at a medical centre in Brooklyn to one in Afghanistan. Afghan women have a one in eleven lifetime risk of maternal death and over 90 per cent give birth without assistance.

 UNFPA's clean birth kit will be prominently featured during Friday’s series premiere. The  kit can help prevent infections during emergency delivery and is designed as a stopgap measure for women who are unable to get to a health facility in time. Over the last five years UNFPA has distributed more than one million clean birthing kits in emergency situations globally. In 2010, these kits helped women in Haiti,  Kyrgyzstan, DRC, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

In a crisis or refugee situations, one in five women of childbearing age is likely to be pregnant. Conflicts and natural disasters put these women and their babies at risk because of the sudden loss of medical support, compounded in many cases by trauma, malnutrition or disease, and exposure to violence. UNFPA seeks to make motherhood as safe as possible during crisis situations by providing care before, during and after delivery.