FCI Bolivia is a key partner in the promotion of indigenous women’s rights

FCI Bolivia was one of the organizers of the planning and coordination meeting of the regional initiative to promote maternal and intercultural health of indigenous women. In partnership with UNFPA and the indigenous women’s association Enlace Continental-Southern Region, FCI took an active role at the meeting held in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, from October 27th to the 29th. Indigenous women leaders, together with representatives from UNFPA, the Spanish Agency for International Development (AECID) and FCI, met to evaluate the progress made this year and prioritize key strategies for 2010. The project is funded by UNFPA and AECID.

As part of the same initiative, Alexia Escóbar Vásquez, FCI Bolivia’s National Coordinator, was invited by Enlace Continental-Southern Region to be a facilitator at the International Workshop to Increase Participation of Indigenous Women in Public Policies. Sixty indigenous women leaders participated at the workshop, held in Buenos Aires from Novemver 4 to the 6.


Community leaders are crucial to increasing use of maternity services

In rural African villages, community leaders — chiefs, religious leaders, women's group leaders, and others — can have a major influence on how local people manage health issues, including pregnancy and childbirth. They also provide an important link between communities and health facilities, and can help mobilize communities to demand better health services. Many such leaders, however, have little if any information about maternal health. Earlier this year, FCI trained over 200 community leaders in three districts in Tanzania to encourage greater use of maternal health services. "If women in our community experience safer pregnancy and childbirth, they will have a healthier family," said one participant. During the training, community leaders developed messages tailored to their unique social and cultural environment to encourage women to seek skilled maternity care, as well as action plans for sharing these messages with members of the community.

In a recent post on the Global Health Council’s blog, Ann Starrs argues that ending maternal death requires not only more funding but change at the community level. “Yes,” she writes, “it is urgently important to build health systems that can provide skilled care, emergency treatment, postpartum care, reproductive health services, and family planning for every woman everywhere. But clean, accessible, professionally-staffed health centers can only save the lives of women who use them… Communities — and the respected, influential local leaders who can be such powerful agents of change at the grassroots level — need the education and empowerment to take ownership of their local health services, to demand and create accountability, and to help change the social and cultural norms that stand between women and the skilled care that they need.” Click here to read more.

Bolivian government to use FCI materials nationally

¡Cuídate! Una Guía de Salud y Bienestar, an educational flipchart on gender and reproductive health and rights that FCI developed with the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB), will be adapted by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) for use by the Bolivian Ministry of Health in indigenous and rural communities across the country’s Highlands. The National Maternal and Newborn Health Committee (Mesa de Maternidad y Nacimiento Seguros), headed by the health minister, has also expressed interest in updating and reprinting a national policy brief on maternal health that FCI produced two years ago. Click here to learn more about FCI’s work in Latin America and the Caribbean.


Global NGO forum calls for delivering on promise of ICPD

In early September, nearly 200 civil society organizations came together in Berlin for the Global Partners in Action: NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Development, an event to mark the 15th anniversary of the historic International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994. Participants reviewed progress on the commitments in the ICPD Programme of Action and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and made plans for joint advocacy to fulfill their great promise. Interviewed by the British medical journal The Lancet (hear the interview here), Ann Starrs said that the forum helps to “ensure that sexual and reproductive health and rights is part of the broader development agenda and can be a key part of the dialogue in 2010 when we are talking about what needs to de done to achieve the MDGs.” The resulting Call to Action demands “concrete, practical and fully funded actions” by governments to fulfill 15 years of promises to invest in equality, human rights, and social and economic development for women and girls.

FCI research shows primary health facilities are key to increasing skilled care use

In an article published in the September 2009 issue of Social Science & Medicine, FCI presented findings from our work to improve access to skilled maternity care in Burkina Faso, research conducted as part of FCI’s groundbreaking Skilled Care Initiative with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Skilled Care Initiative resulted in a significant increase in women’s use of facility-based maternity care in the intervention district, particularly at lower-level health facilities. Most importantly, large wealth inequities in the use of professional care during childbirth were almost eliminated — among all women, and among women who experienced complications during delivery. FCI’s results, described in “Improving poor women’s access to maternity care: Findings from a primary care intervention in Burkina Faso,”  suggest that efforts to upgrade maternity services at primary care facilities may be key for improving poor women’s access to and use of skilled care during childbirth.



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