"Most African countries are lagging behind in achieving the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] and will not make as much progress in health, nutrition and sanitation as had hoped, U.N. officials said" on Thursday, the Associated Press/ABC News reports.
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"The African Union has launched a new website for its Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal, Newborn and Child Mortality in Africa (CARMMA)," which "aims to promote maternal and newborn survival, and provide evidence on progress to achieving health targets that have been set by African leaders," according to the Maternal Health Task Force's blog.
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Low levels of omega-3 may be behind postpartum depression, according to a review lead by Gabriel Shapiro of the University of Montreal and the Research Centre at the Sainte-Justine Mother and Child Hospital.
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After President Barack Obama's re-election on Tuesday, the following blog posts addressed possible foreign policy priorities during the next administration.
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"An Indian government program to reduce the number of home births by giving expectant mothers cash grants has increased the number of hospital deliveries, but gaps in health care services are still causing avoidable maternal deaths, an alliance of health organizations has said," BMJ reports.
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Women's eNews examines India's Indira Gandhi Maternity Support Scheme, a health care benefit offering $80 cash assistance to pregnant women older than 18 years and who do not have more than two living children.
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The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) on Friday released a report (.pdf) titled "Improving Maternal Mortality and Other Aspects of Women's Health," the center reports on its webpage.
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"Tanzania has made significant advances in cutting maternal deaths thanks to a United Nations-sponsored program that brings public and private sectors together to resolve one of the most stubborn but preventable woes afflicting the developing world," but more must be done to scale up efforts to save lives, leaders involved in the program said during a news conference on Tuesday at U.N. Headquarters, the U.N. News Centre reports.
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"While reports from the United Nations as well as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) indicate that maternal deaths are declining around the world, far too many women continue to die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth," Ana Langer, director of the Women and Health Initiative at the Harvard School of Public Health, writes in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog.
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"Supplies -- the essential medicines and medical equipment frontline health workers need to successfully do their jobs -- are a vital part of the solution to saving the lives of mothers and newborns," Catharine Taylor, a maternal health expert with PATH, writes in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog, adding, "And yet, they are frequently overlooked in the ongoing conversation about how to improve maternal health in the developing world."
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A new partnership announced today at the United Nations will make a safe, effective, long-acting, reversible method of contraception available to more than 27 million women in the world's poorest nations.
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Noting the U.N. Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children on Wednesday "released 10 bold recommendations which, if achieved, will ensure women and children will have access to 13 life-saving commodities," Jennifer Bergeson-Lockwood, a maternal health adviser with USAID, writes in USAID's "IMPACTblog" that the agency is working "to integrate systems across commodities to better and more efficiently serve women and children everywhere, and scale up programs to have nation-wide impact."
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The Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health has received about $20 billion in new money, according to a new report from The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH).
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The U.N. on Wednesday "presented a plan to make life-saving health supplies more accessible, while a new report found that, despite impressive reductions in maternal and child mortality in the past decade in some countries, millions of women and children still die every year from preventable causes," the U.N. News Centre reports.
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MindChild Medical, Inc. today announced that it has received clearance for its Pre-Marketing Notification (510(k)) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its MERIDIAN non-invasive fetal heart monitor.
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"Morocco has made great strides in improving maternal health in recent years, decreasing its maternal mortality ratio by over 60 percent since 1990," but "a wide maternal health gap" exists between women in urban and rural areas, where deliveries generally are attended by an experienced yet untrained family member, Women's eNews reports.
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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday "urged a stronger global partnership to advance progress on the development targets world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015, as a new United Nations report finds that significant gains risk slowing due to declining aid," the U.N. News Centre reports.
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"In developing countries where access to health care during pregnancy can be scarce or grossly underused due to lack of education, financial costs, and proximity to health centers, women die unnecessarily from pregnancy and birth complications," Jennifer James, founder of Mom Bloggers for Social Good, writes in this post in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog.
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Highlighting a recent report by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine about the use of the drug misoprostol to prevent postpartum hemorrhage and the WHO's inclusion of the drug on its Essential Medicine List, Guardian health editor Sarah Boseley writes in this post in her "Global Health Blog," "Seldom has there been a drug that has excited as much controversy as misoprostol."
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The babies of breast cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy while pregnant do not appear to be at higher risk of complications, according to an Article published Online First in The Lancet Oncology.
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