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October 18, 2007
Women Deliver Global Conference

LONDON - Health professionals, advocates and researchers, as well as international organizations, are converging on London today for a major global conference dedicated to improving the health of women and children worldwide.

The “Women Deliver” conference will run until Oct. 20. More than 2,000 are slated to attend the meeting, which was organized by a committee that included Family Care International, the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Women Deliver” marks the 20-year anniversary of the Safe Motherhood Initiative, an effort that put maternal deaths – those related to pregnancy and childbirth – on the international agenda. The conference will include programs and speakers about supporting women in conflict; addressing violence during pregnancy; scaling up or increasing successful strategies to decrease maternal deaths; and mobilizing public will and funding.

Two decades after the initiative’s beginning, safe motherhood is now better integrated in health care worldwide, but more than 500,000 women still die each year from pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes.

Ipas President and CEO Elizabeth Maguire is attending “Women Deliver” along with other Ipas staff and partners in order to highlight unsafe abortion as a leading—and preventable—cause of maternal deaths. According to recently updated WHO estimates, about 66,500 deaths annually are caused by unsafe abortion. All but 100 of those deaths occur in the developing world; 36,000 occur in Africa.

Maguire said: “The conference provides an opportunity to raise the visibility of unsafe abortion as a public-health problem and a human-rights issue.  We are gathering in London to deepen global commitment to improving the lives of women and families around the world – and especially of the poorest among us – by focusing attention, our collective talents and resources on the most preventable yet most neglected cause of maternal death: unsafe abortion.

“Every eight minutes, somewhere in the world, a woman dies from complications of unsafe abortion and at least 75 more women are injured, many permanently.  What they have in common is that they are so desperate to end unwanted or unhealthy pregnancies that they are willing to do whatever it takes, even risk their own lives.  Too often that’s exactly what they have to do because safe abortion services are unavailable, inaccessible or unaffordable – even in many settings where abortion is legally permitted.

“This is an outrage in a world where we have so many more contraceptive options and safe ways to end pregnancy.”

Today, Maguire will moderate a panel discussion called “Investing in women’s access to safe abortion: What are we waiting for?” The session will feature Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, Ipas Vice President for Africa; Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights; Maria Luisa Sanchez Fuentes, Executive Director of Mexico’s Information Group on Reproductive Choice (Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida) GIRE or; and Dr. Nozer Sheriar of the Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology Societies of India (FOGSI).

Ipas will extend momentum from “Women Deliver” on Oct. 23-24 when it co-sponsors the Global Safe Abortion Conference, also in London, with the United Kingdom’s Marie Stopes International and Abortion Rights. For updates and more information on that conference, visit www.globalsafeabortion.org and check this website.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258