Women in low-and-middle-income countries need clean birth kits in order to stave off deadly infections in themselves and their newborns. This is the case not only during home births with midwives but also in institutionalized settings.
Zubaida Bai, founder of Ayzh, a social enterprise that creates clean, safe birthing kits for women as well as reproductive, newborn and adolescent kits, discusses how she included women’s voices in the development of clean birthing kits.
I am convinced that in order for maternal health interventions to work anywhere in the world, women must be consulted first as opposed to NGOs and charities developing products for women without their input. Bai expresses this brilliantly in this recent TED talk.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Did you know that Katrina led to 5,000 reported missing children and it took seven months to connect the last child with her parents?
This summer, during the height of the hurricane season Save the Children wants parents and their children to be prepared should disaster strike again. Save the Children is imploring parents to make sure their children have an emergency contact card with not only information for local family, but also family who live out of town. This is critically important because during disasters local networks and telephones lines are usually down. Being able to call family who are not affected by a storm is important to connect children back to families.