Final day of the Women Deliver Conference- Islean Kinghorn
All sorts of people have turned up at the women deliver conference!
An exhausted Islean has made it to the last day of the conference. And it was a Saturday too. Here is her report on the final day -Rhona
Islean Kinghorn
I’m going to launch right in today, although I must apologise because I slept in a little this morning and so missed the first half of the morning Plenary. I may therefore, have missed some important points.
Morning Plenary - The Future Is Now
- Helene Gayle, President and Chief Executive Officer, CARE
- Li Dan, AIDS activist
- Congresswoman Lois Capps, Co chair US Congressional Caucus on Women’s Issues
- Kul C. Gautam, Deputy Executive Director, Unicef
Key Points
- Utilizing the Media to transmit the message of empowerment to women, taking more advantage to of mediums such as the internet (blogging!), whilst also keeping in mind that the majority of women around the world do not have access to such technology
- The issue of language as a barrier to many, the majority of conferences, literature and application procedures are all done in English or occasionally French or Spanish, never in the languages of developing countries
- There is a lack of resources but those that are available need to better utilized more effectively, they need to be mobilized into the community and not trapped with in the beurocracy of international bodies
- 25 years ago AIDS was not a human rights issue but was made so by activists, this comes back to yesterdays points of developing a discourse\
- Drawing on the AIDS movement, the inclusion of those who have experienced the issues into the centre of the movement
Communication for Change: Media Workshop
- Rina Jimenez-David, Philippine Daily Inquirer
- Demetrio Weber, Jornal O Globo Brazil
I didn’t actually intend to go to this talk but there was a mistake on the programme so I went to the wrong room but there were still some useful ideas
Key Points
- Media is reflective of society, there is little precedence given to social issues within newspapers, the front pages are dominated by politics, economics and celebrity
- What is news? How can we package issues of women’s health to become ‘good’ news?
- Press have to respond to editors and reader demand, just because you are doing good work on a deserving issue, doesn’t mean it will have ‘bite’ in media, don’t feel animosity toward the journalist
- Issues need a context within which stories can be hung, approach journalists on special events days or with new developments
- Journalists are not just conduits for your agendas but are half of a partnership, if they write a story on your issue then convey your appreciation to their editor, it allows them to report on you again ion the future
Faces from the Frontline: Obstetric Fistula
- Gloria Esegbona, Obstetrician, UK
- Fatima Lawal Aliyu, Nigeria, Fistula Survivor
key points
- Fistula in this context refers to the opening made between the bladder and the vagina and/or the rectum and the vagina, produced due to prolonged delivery or weakening of the vaginal wall from multiple deliveries.
- Are avoidable with trained support, knowing how to identify those requiring C-section and being able to deliver such interventions
- It affects women from all social backgrounds because even those who attend hospitals for their birth, staff may not be adequately trained
- In the majority of cases is treatable with surgery, some cases full restoration is not possible to excessive injury
- Fistula patients are often shunned from their communities and family due to the unpleasant nature of the condition and stigma, many are not aware of the connection between childbirth and fistula
- There are people within affected countries who are willing to perform the required surgery but it costs money and many of the women effected are too poor to pay
- United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has set up a campaign to end Fistula in over 40 countries, funding surgery, educating fistula survivors so they can act as advocates within their communities and raising awareness
I read a book by Dr Catherine Hamlin called ‘The Hospital By The River’. It is a memoir of her experiences of setting up a Fistula hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the late 1950’s. At that time they were there, very few people knew how to repair fistula and they were in fact pioneers. It is therefore very encouraging to hear that although there are still many problems, more people are being trained in the surgical techniques required. It was also good to see Fistula taking quite a high profile throughout the conference.
Closing Plenary
Morten Wetland, State Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister of Norway
Key points
- Norway have pledged $1 billion over the next 10 years to support the MDG’s
- This brings Norway close to spending 1% of the counties GDP on aid
- They pledged to work to create a network of global leaders to help reach targets
Marjorie Ngaunje, Minister of Health, Malawi delivered the statement from the Ministers Forum, government ministers from the around the world had been meeting throughout the conference to discuss what their governments could do.
The Strategies stipulated:
- Access to affordable family planning and reproductive health services to prevent and manage unintended and unsafe abortion
- Reduce the stigma associated with abortion
- Provision of affordable, skilled care, including emergency care, during and after childbirth for all mothers and newborns
- Efforts to address other factors that contribute to high maternal mortality such as poor nutrition
The Commitments:
- That MDG 4 and 5 achievement remain high on the political agenda
- Advocacy within their own country for women’s health rights and increased financial and human resources
- Advocating for more resources within international forums
- Develop or strengthen gender-equitable plans on a national level, with costs fully estimated
- Manage health resources effectively
Encourage all areas of society to intensify and sustain participation:
- Establish accountability through better monitoring and evaluation i.e. expanding maternal death audits
- Call for creative new solutions
- Convene a UN general assembly special session on maternal health that would result in a global plan of action
- Create a global fund for maternal health
As people began to leave the plenary hall I asked Jill Sheffield, President of Family Care International and Organising partner of the conference how she felt the conference had gone and this is what she had to say:
“I think the conference has been an astounding success. This room was filled with people, 1860 people. All of them coming to recognise, that women do deliver, and it’s only a smart thing to do to invest in them. I think the world has changed, starting now.”
Do I agree? I’m not sure. There have been times over the past three days when I have been inspired and excited, full of hope. People from all over the world speaking eloquently with such passion and pain. There have also been times when I have felt very frustrated. The last talk I went to opened by saying the same things as the first I went to. I didn’t need to know that women were dieing needlessly, that’s why I came to the conference. What I felt I didn’t get enough of were new strategies. How are we ‘practically’ going to reverse the trend of the last twenty years, stagnancy. The crowd cheered at the achievement of reaching 1% GDP donation. I thought to myself, can we really be satisfied by 1%? I asked Jill Sheffield the same question, her response was that it was ” a great start”, that it left “…the door open for more, but we have to prove that we can deliver”.
I do think she is right, we have to celebrate our achievements and use them to revitalise us, to renew our efforts, to reach further. I realise also that I have come into this movement only very recently. So while I am impatient to see results now, people have been waiting for twenty years and to get a conference as big as this is its self an achievement. I think what came out of the minister’s forum is promising. I choose the word promising because I think we need to wait and see how serious they are. I had heard that the ministers sent from many countries were not those who had the power to bring about real change. Lets hope they were impassioned enough to go home and convince those in power to realise what has been committed. We have to start somewhere.
I could go on and on but I will finish there. What I will say though is that I learnt such a huge amount. Not just facts and figures on maternal health, but about human rights, about policy, the structure of NGO’s, International bodies, the media, advocacy and so much more that I don’t even think I’m aware of yet. So I urge all of you to try and attend events like this when and where ever possible. Islean Kinghorn
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