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How USAID helps mothers around the world (May 6)
3 MINUTE READ
May 6, 2020

Woman and newborn baby
Elena Tantely Rasoarilala holds her 1-day-old baby girl, Tiphanie Sombiniaina Fanavotantsoa, at a hospital in Madagascar in 2018. (The Maternal and Child Survival Program/Karen Kasmauski)

For women around the world, pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum recovery can be life-threatening.

To mitigate these risks to mothers, the U.S. Agency for International Development will increase funding for maternal and child health care in high-risk areas of selected countries through its MOMENTUM initiative.

“In the past 10 years alone, USAID has helped save the lives of an estimated 9.3 million children and 340,000 women,” said Irene Koek, an administrator in USAID’s Bureau for Global Health.

But despite a general improvement in the health of women and children around the world, there is still an “unfinished agenda to improve maternal, newborn and child health” in certain regions, she said.

Man, women, and baby on a bed
A new family in the maternity ward of a hospital in Yamuna Vihar, India, in 2015 (USAID)