Christy Turlington Burns

Last week, the maternal health community received some positive news. According to a new report released by the World Health Organization, the number of women who died from pregnancy and childbirth complications dropped to 287,000 in 2010 -- a steep decline from the 358,000 maternal deaths reported in...

No matter where she is from, a mother's happiness will depend on her child's wellbeing. This similarity cuts through all other differences that may exist between mothers living on opposite sides of the world. It means a mother with a healthy child can empathise with another mother's pain at watching...

Note from the bloggers: As fellow music lovers and advocates for improving maternal health, we're joining our voices to let you know about a new CD that will help make a difference in women's lives around the world.

"Daddy, Daddy," a little girl calls out in the background. The strumming...

Every year when February 14th rolls around, I search within for a real connection to the symbol of this over commercialized event we call Valentine's Day. Sure it's a nice gesture to send cards and love notes to our loved ones but that certainly doesn't and shouldn't limit us from...

Christy Turlington Burns, ONE member and founder of Every Mother Counts, shares a resourceful way you can help the world's poorest today.

When was the last time your cell phone saved your life?

In the world's poorest countries, this happens every day. Cell phones help mothers get...

This blog is part 5 of a 5 part series on Partners in Health (PIH) and their work in Haiti. It was co-authored by Erin Thornton, the executive director of Every Mother Counts.

For our final blog on Haiti we wanted to focus on the future of this...

This blog is part 4 of a 5 part series on Partners in Health (PIH) and their work in Haiti.

For those of you who have heard of Paul Farmer, you can probably imagine him trudging for miles to visit patients in their homes in rural Haiti or...

This blog is part 3 of a 5 part series on Partners in Health and their work in Haiti.

According to a well-known Chinese proverb, we are told: "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him...

This blog is part 2 of a 5 part series on Partners in Health (PIH) and their work in Haiti.

We arrived after lunchtime into Cap-Haitien International Airport, leaving behind a rainy cold day in the northeast. From the air, Port-au-Prince resembles many of the neighboring islands in the Caribbean,...

This blog is part 1 of a 5 part series on Partners in Health (PIH) and their work in Haiti.

Erin and I flew down to Haiti late last week to visit our friends at Partners in Health (PIH) and their local affiliate Zanmi Lasante. One week ago...

Forty-three years ago my mother went into labor for the second time. It was either very late New Year's Day or very early on the second day of 1969 depending on how you looked at it but either way- it was a full week past her due date when my...

People thought I was crazy to even consider getting on a plane to Indonesia the day after running the ING NYC Marathon for Every Mother Counts, and in hindsight I probably was, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to travel across the world to meet an extraordinary woman who...

Eight years ago, I suffered a life-threatening complication after delivering my daughter. I was fortunate to have access to health care providers who managed the situation. The experience set me on a path to ensure that geography alone no longer determines whether or not childbirth is deadly for women and...

Like many Americans, my family just celebrated Halloween with all its tricks and excesses of treats. In all the excitement, an important piece of news may not have made it on to the radar screen for many of us, though it may represent a more shocking -- and very real...

As the saying goes... there is no rest for the weary... yesterday was a BIG day for maternal, newborn and child health. It started off with rushing my kids out the door and off to school downtown, then racing uptown to get to an event titled "Maternal Health in Crisis"...

Ah, New York in the fall. The air is crisp, the kids are excited to be back in school and I get my own back to school week when the world comes to town for the UN General Assembly. It's sort of a strange phenomenon -- the UN GA provides...

This weekend marked a milestone for the African continent. The Republic of South Sudan made its official debut -- a triumph for democracy and a marked fresh start for a region plagued by conflict for years.

It truly is worthy of a celebration -- the new nation faces enormous potential....

On our final day in Bangladesh, we set out to visit a Grameen Village Bank north of Dhaka city in Dhaladia, Rajendrupur. Grameen Bank was created by Bangladesh's legendary Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Mohamed Yunnus in 1976 who set out to become, as the title of the book about his...

We got up early (again) to brave the Dhaka traffic -- since there's no apparent way to beat it -- and headed southwest out of the city to Matlab for a day with ICDDR,B. It's a mouthful of an acronym but an incredible organization that conducts invaluable research,...

We started our day at Dhaka Medical College's teaching hospital where we learned more about one of the most common pregnancy-related morbidities (or disabilities) that poor women endure in childbirth; obstetric fistula. An obstetric fistula is when a woman suffers an obstructed labor, ultimately tearing a hole in her birth...