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Every minute of every day a woman dies in pregnancy - Davina McCall and Sarah Ferguson back the White Ribbon Alliance's Million Mums Campaign
Imagine kissing your family goodbye each time you went into labour fearing you might never see them again? Having a baby should be a time for celebration yet in some countries the lifetime risk for a woman of dying in childbirth is as high as 1 in 7.
If the number of women who have died worldwide from maternal mortality over the last 20 years were all from the UK we would have wiped out all our mums aged 20-40 in England and Wales .
Its estimated that at least 80% of these deaths are preventable with access to basic healthcare.
This Mother's Day (22 March 09) The White Ribbon Alliance launches its exciting new campaign called "Million Mums" to raise awareness about this issue, and to bring together an active group of people to campaign for healthcare for pregnant women worldwide and speak out against needless maternal mortality.
Million Mums aims to:
- To join together a million mums (or more)
- To raise a million pounds (at least)
- To provide a united voice to speak out against maternal mortality
Million Mums is a new campaign from the international grassroots organisation the White Ribbon Alliance (WRA). Patron of White Ribbon Alliance is Sarah Brown.
You may have seen the moving footage of Davina McCall's visit to Malawi in February 2009 with Comic Relief, partners of the WRA on the subject of maternal health?
How you can help . ..
Sign up to the campaign and donate £1 at www.millionmums.org The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson has designed a special Million Mums pin which goes on sale for £1 at participating outlets this week. And the first 25000 people who sign up at www.millionmums.org will be sent one of her pins.
You can also join the global campaign by organising your own events from dinner parties, film nights, coffee morning, club nights etc to raise money. Or get in touch with Million Mums to share your own ideas and find out about writing letters to global leaders to help us all be heard by the policy makers. If you would like to find out more, please contact millionmums@whiteribbonalliance.org
Here's why we need your help to raise awareness of these issues ...
- Every minute of every day, somewhere in the world, a woman dies due to pregnancy and birth related complications
- In Africa and Asia, pregnancy and childbirth are the number one causes of death amongst women of childbearing age, killing more than half a million women each year and leaving an estimated 2 million children motherless
- At least 80% of these deaths are preventable - women are dying needlessly, for lack of healthcare
This is a tragedy. Together, we can do something about it right now.
