During the month of May, IMPACT will be highlighting USAID’s work in Global Health. From May 11-17, we will be featuring the important role of mothers and partnerships in Global Health.
While visiting Haiti last month, I met with a group of farmers to discuss how they were using micro-loans from a local cooperative association. During the conversation, a woman mango grower spoke about using credit to pay her kids’ school fees prior to harvest and then using profits from the sale of her fruit to pay off the loan. It reminded me of a conversation with Maasai women during a trip to Kenya where they recounted the use of proceeds from their cattle fattening business to pay school fees for kids in their community. Both exchanges brought to life the critical role that mothers—and women generally—play in promoting development around the world.
A woman and her baby. Photo Credit: Adriane Ohanesian
Mother’s Day provides a special opportunity for us to reflect on the role moms play in our lives and in the lives of people around the world. In the home, mothers are often the primary caregivers. They are important in ensuring that children receive the food, health care and education needed to grow into healthy, productive adults. They are educators, teaching children skills that will last a lifetime. The American Sociology Association estimates that moms spend 10 more hours a week multitasking than fathers, mainly doing housework and taking care of kids. At the same time, they are often also generating income for the family. That income is critical to kids’ well-being because girls and women have been found to spend 90 percent of their earned income on their families, while men only spend between 30-40 percent that way. Given their multiple, critical roles, we need to think about how we can support moms and leverage their contributions. Invest in mothers and we can grow economies, alleviate poverty and create the foundation for sustainable growth and development.
In the past twenty years, mothers have been instrumental in helping reduce the mortality rate for children under five years old by almost fifty percent. Unfortunately, today, every two minutes, a mother dies during childbirth. A staggering 80 percent of those deaths could be prevented by providing access to basic health services. Similarly, almost 19,000 children under five still die daily from preventable causes. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia bear 75 percent of the global disease burden, and mothers and children continue to suffer disproportionately from these illnesses borne of poverty. USAID is working hard, in partnership with country governments and non-governmental organizations globally, to reduce these preventable deaths.
Through continuous improvements to monitoring and evaluation, we are directing resources toward increasing services for underserved populations; concentrating on the primary causes of child deaths in the hardest hit countries. We are being strategic with taxpayer dollars by investing in programs that yield the greatest results. Our development efforts are increasingly focused on educating girls, empowering women, and promoting inclusive economic growth. That’s because we know that educated mothers are less likely to die in childbirth, more likely to send their kids to school, and provide better nutrition and health care at home. In fact, data suggests that each additional year of schooling reduces the likelihood that a mother’s child will die as an infant by 10 percent.
At USAID, we are supporting mothers worldwide. Since June 2012, the agency has been helping lead the U.S. Government’s push to renew the global effort to end preventable child death. We are committed to utilizing resources, technology, and expertise to achieve the A Promise Renewed for Child Survival goal of reducing the under five-mortality rate to below 20 deaths per 1000 live births by the year 2035. Reaching this target is a team effort by governments, civil society, the private sector, innovators, and the global health and faith-based community. Workings together, the international community can help ensure a promising future for all women and their children.
We know the statistics and we know what we need to do. We know that investing in mothers pays dividends for children, families, communities and nations. The data is clear but it’s the stories from the women in Haiti, Kenya, and around the world that bring those numbers to life. This Mother’s Day, let’s honor their wisdom and their contributions.
Follow USAID for Global Health (@USAIDGH) on Twitter and use #GHMatters to join in the conversation.
