LWV logoLeague of Women Voters of the Upper Valley

Hanover, NH, Norwich, VT and neighboring towns

updated 7/27/04     Home Page >> talks at recent League forums

Women's Health in Developing Countries--The Role of the United Nations


Ms Quimby is unusually well qualified to speak on this topic. She is a certified Nurse-midwife with over 25 years clinical and teaching experience.  In the Upper Valley, she developed the NurseMidwife service at DHMC and served as its Director from 1983 to 1990; more recently she has taught at the Dartmouth Medical School and at the Dartmouth College Women's Studies Program.

She has first-hand experience in developing countries. Since she and her husband spent a year in Uganda in 1990-91, she has made numerous visits to provide technical support and training on women's health in Ghana, Kenya, Bolivia, Vietnam and Indonesia.  Much of this work was done as a Senior Technical advisor at the American College of Nurse-Midwives.


1. an Overview
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to address the League on such a vital topic. I believe that, as the world becomes more and more a global village, the health of mothers and their children everywhere does impact on all of us. This has been a very challenging paper to write. I care passionately about the issues and wanted to bring home the message of how important the work is; but my original versions had so many acronyms and statistics, my eyes glazed over typing it into the computer! The challenge for me has been to find the best way to "bring you to the field" while maintaining enough objectivity to frame the issues. It has not always been popular to be concerned with these issues. The plight of women in Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Ghana, India or Indonesia is difficult to get one's head or heart around until the numbers become faces and the struggle becomes a story. Since 1991, 1 have been working with the American College of Nurse-Midwives international unit on a number of projects to train nurses and midwives in the skills required to provide quality reproductive health care. In the process, I have seen the devastating results of lack of training, lack of medicines, lack of food, lack of contraceptives: women's lives that are incredibly difficult and that often result in death or crippling damage from unplanned, ill-timed, or unattended births. Tonight, I would like to focus on those agencies of the UN and departments of the US government dealing primarily with RH: gender equity, FP, Safe Motherhood and HIV It needs to be said that there are many superb NGO's like Care, Save the Children, ACNM, John Snow, FHI Population Council, The Global Health Council, and many other groups also working in this field, as are many major universities. In my ten years alone, I have been involved with projects funded to UAB, JHPIEGO, CVVRU, and UNC. DMS is now also involved in international health work.

The League of Women Voters Position on the United Nations includes, and I quote, "strong support for the central role of the UN in addressing the social, economic, and humanitarian needs of all people. The advancement and empowerment of women is fundamental to achieving peace and prosperity..."

Among the worthwhile United Nations efforts needing League support is CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women adopted by the general assembly in 1979. This is an international "Bill of Rights" for women and forms the backdrop for much of the work being done in the field of reproductive health. CEDAW addresses women's rights, including women's right to health care. As of November of 2001, 168 countries have ratified CEDAW. A small minority of countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, and Sudan, has not ratified CEDAW. The US is one of only a few industrialized democracies that have not signed on. Narrowly approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July of this year, Congress failed to approve it in October. Women around the world need the US to speak loudly and clearly in support of CEDAW. Without US ratification, other governments feel free to ignore the mandate and its obligations. Chief among CEDAW's important mandates is Article 12: The elimination of discrimination from the field of health care, including access to services such as family planning with special attention to women living in rural communities. CEDAW also focuses on the necessity of increasing women's access to nutrition services during pregnancy and lactation.

Current initiatives in women's health owe a major debt to the United Nations International Conferences on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994 and in Beijing in 1995. Here, governments defined a new agenda to promote reproductive health. The Programme of Action for the ICPD on women's health was the result of considerable- effort on the part of women's advocates the world over to improve their reproductive and sexual health and rights. The Programme of Action had three primary objectives:
Women shaped the tone and outcome of ICPD, and as we read these documents, we realize that women's health advocates concentrated on three major action areas:
Maternal mortality is an important measure of women's health and of the competence of the health care system.

The United Nations Human Development Report points out that more than 4.5 billion people live in developing countries where economic growth cannot keep up with the population growth. The UN programs most concerned with women's health include: UNDP, UNFPA (its population fund), UNIFEM (Development fund for women,) and UNICEF.

A Safe Motherhood Inter-Agency Group, consisting of WHO, UNFPA, World Bank, UNICEF and the IMF dedicates significant program energy and funding to initiatives designed to decrease maternal mortality. UNICEF, for example, has moved beyond immunization and feeding programs into important arenas such as preventing the sexual abuse of girls and the rights of women and designing programs to prevent maternal mortality as well as programs to care for children.

It isn't possible to cover all the areas of need in reproductive health, but I'd like to highlight a few key areas.
<<  Back     Next  >>
Home www.uppervalleyleague.org