World Bank : New plan to help poor countries prevent mothers' and children's deaths
With many countries far from achieving Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5) and less than five years remaining to scale up efforts, yesterday, the World Bank released a 2010-2015 blueprint for its reproductive health work, which will help poor countries reduce their high fertility rates and prevent the widespread deaths of mothers and children. “A mother’s unnecessary death in childbirth is not just a human tragedy. It's also an economic and social catastrophe that deprives her surviving children of nurture and nutrition and too often of the chance of education,” says Julian Schweitzer, Acting Vice President of Human Development at the World Bank.