Arming young people in Mali with urgently-needed information
In Mali, where a majority of the population is under 25 years old, over 40% of all girls between 15 and 19 years old are pregnant or have already become mothers. Since 2008, FCI-Mali has been working closely with government ministries to create a national strategic plan for adolescent health. FCI has also worked innovatively to ensure young Malians’ access to the sexual and reproductive health information they need to embark on safe, productive, fulfilling adult lives.
In late June, FCI's National Director, Fatimata Kane, was part of an intensive, government-led effort to develop and test new curricula for training health care workers to provide comprehe nsive health services for young people, based on WHO’s global standards. Looking beyond the health system, FCI-Mali has worked over the past 2 years to train young peer educators to reach apprentices and other informal workers — using a curriculum based on FCI’s You, Your Life, Your Dreams — with information about their sexuality, their rights, and the assertiveness and communication skills needed to exercise them. The program also raised awareness and support among employers, religious leaders, and other influential adults, and has showed powerful results: a survey showed young people’s awareness about birth control rising from 45% to 72%, and employers’ knowledge about available HIV testing for their young employees went from 34% to 60%.
Working in partnership with the health, youth, and education ministries, FCI has also developed a curriculum to help parents communicate with their children about sensitive issues of sexual and reproductive health. After the successful launch of this French-language tool, it is being translated into Arabic and Bamanankan (the language of the Bambara people, spoken by an estimated 80% of Mali’s population), and plans are underway to create an illustrated flipchart version for lower-literacy parents, to train outreach workers, and to extend distribution of the curriculum into neighboring Burkina Faso.
AIDS 2010 message: ‘One cannot succeed without the other’
 AIDS 2010, the XVIII International AIDS Conference (IAC), the premier gathering for those working in the field of HIV and AIDS, took place in Vienna in mid-July, and FCI was there. Globally, AIDS and pregnancy-related complications are the two leading causes of death for women of reproductive age, and this was an opportunity to highlight the urgent need for a rights-based, integrated approach to health — one that links sexual and reproductive health, including maternal health, with HIV. FCI president Ann Starrs was on the scene to strengthen partnerships between the reproductive, maternal and child health and HIV/AIDS communities, and to promote the Joint Action Plan for Women's and Children's Health, a historic global effort to accelerate progress on women's and children's health, launched this year by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
At a special opening-day session titled HIV and the Millennium Development Goals: Can We Do One Without the Other?, Ann’s presentation set the stage for a spirited discussion of programs, policies, and funding. Panelists included U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby; senior officials from WHO, the Brazilian health ministry, and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and a prominent Nigerian health activist. A webcast of the session can be viewed here.
In her remarks, Ann made it clear that effective integration of care requires significantly increased resources. “An integrated approach,” she argued, “is not an excuse for reducing the funding or even for keeping the funding at the level that it’s at now. The needs are tremendous, and we’ve got to push, as a community, for greater funding for integrated approaches.” FCI’s message hit home with the conference audience: during the Q&A, several participants pushed panelists to commit to integrated approaches to health programming and funding. One, a youth organizer from India, noted that “it’s a refreshing change when a health system looks at me as a young woman and not just as a series of diseases that need to be treated.”
FCI on the scene at G8 and G20 Summits
In the runup to the G8 and G20 Summits, which it hosted during the last week of June, the Canadian government declared that maternal and child health would be a central focus of the agenda, particula rly for the G8. FCI was one of the few international health NGOs on the scene in Toronto for these historic meetings, culminating months of advocacy to ensure that the world leaders’ discussion would lead to concrete financial commitments, and that governments will be held accountable for delivering on these commitments. Amy Boldosser, senior advocacy officer, kept colleagues abreast of developments throughout the weekend on Twitter and Facebook, and blogged on RH Reality Check. Amy provided a summary of the summits’ results:
The protestors clashing with police got all the press, but the summits brought important developments for maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, and reproductive health as well. The G8 released the details of its Muskoka Initiative for Maternal and Child Health on Saturday, a five-year, $7.3 billion package for improving maternal, newborn, and child health and increasing access to reproductive health. While the funds committed may not have been all we hoped for, there were some pleasant surprises in the communiqué details... Read more.
FCI hosts Latin American women leaders' conference to fight maternal death
On late May 2010 in Lima, Peru, FCI’s Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) program co-hosted a Regional Conference of Women Leaders, bringing together 80 high-level leaders from government, regional and international agencies, and civil society organizations. This conference, organized by the Regional Taskforce on Maternal Mortality Reduction, focused on the theme Maternal death: breaking the silence, adding our voices.  The conference also featured the inaugural display of an exhibition — Vínculos Vitales/Touched — by photographer Joey O’Loughlin, organized by FCI on behalf of the Andean Plan to Prevent Adolescent Pregnancy. This display of poignant and inspiring images, illuminating the pervasive and multifaceted problem of teen pregnancy in the Andean region, can be viewed as an online slideshow. Read more.
Women Deliver 2010 galvanizes attention to maternal health
 Women Deliver 2010 was held in Washington DC on June 7-9, 2010. The conference’s theme was "Delivering solutions for girls and women," and participants called on governments worldwide to protect the hundreds of thousands of women who still die in pregnancy and childbirth each year by investing an additional $12 billion or more in women’s health and family planning services. FCI was represented in numerous conference sessions, and chaired the working group that planned the sessions focusing on maternal and newborn health. Women Deliver also included the 2010 conference of Countdown to 2015, a collaborative effort that collects and analyzes maternal, newborn, and child mortality and coverage data from the 68 countries that account for at least 95% of maternal and child deaths. FCI is a member of Countdown’s coordinating committee and is its co-chair for advocacy.
Women Deliver has grown from a historic 2007 London conference organized by FCI into an independent global advocacy initiative. At the conference, FCI president Ann Starrs said, “We are proud of FCI’s role in launching Women Deliver, and this conference sends a powerful message to world leaders that now is the time for a new level of political commitment and financial investment to save women’s lives.”
FCI on PBS: Maternal health in Haiti
FCI president Ann Starrs was interviewed on the newsmagazine show NOW on PBS, on January 29th for a story on maternal health in Haiti. Haiti had the worst maternal mortality in the Western Hemisphere even before the calamitous January earthquake.
With an estimated 63,000 women in Haiti currently pregnant, a shattered public health system, and a crucial midwife training center lying in ruins, the mission of keeping women alive has never been more daunting. Ann Starrs provided context on the global pandemic of maternal death for this moving and urgently important story. More information can be found at the NOW on PBS website.
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FCI recently published a second edition of 
