I'm speaking at the Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C. today to highlight maternal, child, and reproductive health as a global priority.
Three months ago, I traveled to a village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where I met a young mother named Rukmini. Six days before, she'd given birth to a daughter she named Durga, after the Hindu goddess of power.
According to custom, Rukmini and Durga remained in the same room after the birth. Seven days later, Rukmini carried Durga into the light of day for a ceremony that celebrated the special bond between mother and child, called Chhathi. As their neighbors drummed and sang songs, Rukmini held Durga up to thank the sun god for a healthy birth and ask for his blessing.
I kept thinking about the overwhelming joy, hope, and optimism I felt when each of my three children was born. No matter who you are, no matter where you live, it is incredibly moving to hold a healthy baby in your arms.
But tens of millions of women never get to experience that moment of beauty. For these women, childbirth is filled not with joy, but with dread, pain, and sorrow. They know they might die during delivery. If they survive, they are terrified their baby might die.
The world is now coming together to save the 350,000 mothers and 3 million newborns who die every year. At Women Deliver, we are nurturing a vision that is changing the world.
Women everywhere will have the knowledge and power to save their lives and the lives of their babies.
We can make a new world for mothers like Rukmini. When she hugs her daughter Durga, she holds the future in her hands.
Melinda Gates is a co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For more background on Women Deliver and the foundation's work in maternal, newborn, and child health, see the foundation's Women Deliver page. In this previous blog post, Melinda Gates shares stories of maternal health success from Malawi and India. For more information on our work, visit the foundation's blog and www.gatesfoundation.org.
Follow Melinda Gates on Twitter: www.twitter.com/melindagates
Laura Amazzone: Goddess Durga: A Divine Female Role Model for Our Times?
Anne Geddes: Two Precious Miracles of Life and How They Can Inspire Us
In my system of belief, the dominant philosophy relates to "What goes around, comes around."
The Gates have profited mostly because they have given so freely to others, including me, pounding this missive out on their operating system, on the common electronic language that is their legacy.
Mrs. Gates is precisely correct. We cannot ignore the plight of even a single one of our fellow humans if we are to survive and prosper.
Every penny spent to help the least among us out of the desperation of their impoverished lives will come back to us, exponentially expanded.
Even though we may be among the most affluent, we are in a crisis of unemployment. What better way to facilitate our own recovery than to make small sacrifices and fund a new program of employment along the lines of the Peace Corps, sending our youth and some of our underemployed out into the rest of the world to help lift those less fortunate out of their dispair, and into a more productive life.
We are at a crossroads. We can continue to sow the winds of war, and surely reap a whirlwind of hatred and terrorism.
Or we can do the right thing, sow the seeds of hope, and reap the harvest of fulfilled lives.
I think you are aiming your money to exactly the right people. And I appreciate that you keep track of it.
I'm unemployed and need a job. Do you, your husband or Microsoft need a Geologist? Please help!
Thanks,
Brad
Fast forward to today! Preventing Malaria is simple, more or less, ... cover the babies in the world so they are not bitten by mosquitoes in their sleep, ... Not all exposure is prevented, ... but most. Much.
A Vaccine would be even better, ... but how many New Yorkers die of Malaria?
Thanks for all your doing but what do you have to say about all those vaccines that are harming so many children?
BTW: autism is caused by fragile X syndrome.
It's rise is due to older fathers, not vaccines or mercury.
That's a fact, period.
I would concentrate on things like Ritalin if you want to stop harming children.
But note I do agree in one respect: I never get flu vaccines, but that's different standard childhood vaccinations. I grew up when people still had polio; Joni Mitchell included. Vaccines save lives.
I do agree with you that Ritalin and other drugs they put kids on can be deadly.
I don't understand the logic that the flu shot is a scam yet every other vaccine is not. It's the same junk science behind all the vaccines which makes them all scams.
Vaccines never saved lives, we've just been duped into thinking that they did.
Lastly we need to start realizing that vaccines are drugs.
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