Joyce Banda Quotes

Dying in childbirth is something that's not new; it's been going on for ages, and so it's not something that people focus on; it's not something that gets funded a lot, and it's exactly for that reason that we are losing mothers all the time, and we have kids with no mothers.

Maternal health remains a staggering challenge, particularly in the developing world. Globally, a woman dies from complications in childbirth every minute.

The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals, but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand, because President Bush has cut funding.

The best a health care system can do is to equip itself to meet the needs of each individual woman and birth. Those needs run the gamut from undisturbed home birth to planned cesarean section.

Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health.

I quote the following statement which I saw the other day: "We have lost in all the wars waged in this country since the Declaration of Independence, 244,000 men, killed in battle, and in the past twenty-five years we have lost 375,000 mothers in child birth." Prenatal care in the early months is vitally important and we should do all we can to educate young mothers to go to a doctor if they can afford it, if not to a free clinic to be taught how care for themselves. This is necessary not only for mothers but the babies. With proper care before birth, a child will come into world stronger and healthier.

South Carolina's lack of access to quality maternal health care is pervasive.

We should work to guarantee that there is a midwife or health worker by every woman's side during childbirth.

In the case of maternal health care, you look at, well naturally, it's the mother who's the customer, who makes the decisions. But in truth, the mother in many areas, in certain parts of India, the mother has very little decision-making power at all. The real decision-maker is the mother-in-law.

Childbearing is glorified in part because women die from it.

I'm a mom. I'm from Ethiopia. I gave birth in the U.S. and had all the proper care available to me. If I had given birth in Ethiopia - I don't know if I might have even survived it.

Pregnancy is of course confined to women, but it is in other ways significantly different from the typical covered disease or disability.

Every Mother Counts is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother. We inform, engage, and mobilize audiences to take action and raise funds that support maternal health programs around the world.

After delivering my daughter in 2003, I endured and survived a hemorrhage, the leading childbirth-related complication that takes the lives of thousands of other mothers all over the world.

I am particularly interested in helping to heal women who have a fistula after their pregnancies.

Every woman, whoever she is, wherever she lives, should be able to give birth without the fear she's going to lose her baby or that her baby will lose her mother.

Childbearing, I mean, if there's no place to go to deliver your baby, then you're the one that's delivering in those unhealthy circumstances. Or if you can't get access to family planning, your chances of surviving and being able to bring your kids up if they come one right after the other, that locks you into a cycle of poverty.

Every second, every day, every year, we fail to address demand for reproductive health and family planning services. Lives are lost, and girls' opportunities to thrive and contribute to their country's development shrink. These are real people.

A few countries like Sri Lanka and Honduras have led the way in slashing maternal mortality.

For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy.

Half a million women die each year around the world in pregnancy. It's not biology that kills them so much as neglect.

The H-1B visa program which helps sustain our rapidly growing economy and also helps meet the health care needs of families living in rural New Mexico.

You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.

Many health care providers, particularly physicians in rural and urban areas, are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates.

Without going into a philosophical debate on the rights of the unborn, it is important to recognize the right of women to safe abortion. Even in the case of medically-indicated abortions, the pregnancy termination often results in maternal death, and may cause serious morbidity.