Simple strategies can make big difference in maternal mortality

Aissata Sall Yade, a communications assistant for the Senegal Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, part of IntraHealth International, writes in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog about Aissatou Dia Fall, a head midwife at Senegal's Gallo Dia Health Center in Yeumbeul, and her efforts to improve access to health care for women in the community. She has reached out to different organizations for monetary assistance for her clients, Yade notes, adding, "Strategies like Aissatou Dia Fall's will help improve Senegal's national contraceptive prevalence rate, which is currently only 12 percent. It will also help reduce one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates (410 deaths per 100,000 live births) and reduce the fertility rate (an average of five children per woman)" (10/17).