Editorial

The month of April saw vigorous activity to launch the next phase of the Safe Motherhood campaign on the occasion of International Mother’s Day. This year the campaign, under the theme of ‘Rang-i-Kainat’ aims to raise awareness about UN Human Rights Council’s resolution on ‘Preventable Maternal Mortality and Morbidity and Human Rights’ among the general masses while at the same time lobbying with the policy makers to implement the recommendations of this resolution in letter and spirit.

The baseline study for the Packard Foundation funded project was also completed during April while ‘Pakistan Gender Based Violence and Reproductive Health Network’ (PGRN) under our Gender Based Violence and Reproductive Health (GBV-RH) initiative also experienced swift progress during the month.

On the international front a movement among the Catholics has made headlines that calls upon the Pope to reconsider Vatican's ban on cpntraceptive pill.


Read more on this and other stories as you scroll down!

WPF Observes 9 Days of Activism as Part of its Safe Motherhood Campaign

World Population Foundation, Pakistan along with local partner organizations observed 9-days-of-activism to raise widespread awareness about Safe Motherhood in Pakistan. The campaign was launched in 6 districts across the country and reached out to more than 1000 stakeholders belonging to all walks of life.


In Pakistan, Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) is about 276 maternal deaths per 100, 000 births and post partum hemorrhage (excessive bleeding) is responsible for one third of all maternal deaths. In view of this bleak situation, it is needless to say that Pakistan is far from achieving its commitment with regard to MDG 5 whereby its target is to reduce the MMR to less than 140 by the year 2015.

In 2009, as part of its Safe Motherhood campaign, WPF, along with other civil society organizations was able to pursue the Government of Pakistan to endorse the United Nations Human Rights Council's Resolution on ‘Preventable Maternal Mortality and Morbidity and Human Rights’ in 2009 which declares maternal health as a human rights concern for the very first time.

This year, WPF undertook the task of taking the campaign to all parts of the country to spread widespread awareness about Safe Motherhood as well as to garner support for the Maternal Mortality and Human Rights Resolution for its implementation at the policy level. As part of this campaign, strategic locations in various districts were used for foot print messages containing information on the maternal mortality situation in the country as well as the human rights aspect of this issue. Moreover, media workshops were held in order to bring media organizations on board the cause of Safe Motherhood in Pakistan. Walks and community sensitization seminars were also held at the local level to raise widespread understanding among the community stakeholders. The incidence of Gender Based Violence as a cause of maternal deaths was also highlighted during the awareness raising drive. The major activity was held in Islamabad in a local park on International Mother’s Day in which scores of individuals participated and expressed solidarity with the cause.

The Safe Motherhood campaign under the theme of Rang-e-Kainat aims to advocate national pledge of policy makers and decision makers in milieu of ‘Preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and human rights’ resolution. The campaign is designed to advocate safe motherhood related issues at federal, provincial and district levels through various activities while engaging Implementing partners to organize activities in their respective districts and Provinces along with the collaboration of Media.

As a next step WPF, Pakistan will engage in lobbying with parliamentarians and policy makers to ensure that the recommendations of the Maternal Mortality and Human Rights Resolution are tabled at the national and provincial assemblies for implementation in letter and in spirit.

WPF Focuses its Safe Motherhood Campaign on Balochistan

Balochistan experiences most number of maternal deaths: 856 maternal maternal deaths per 100, 000 live births. For this very reason WPF, Pakistan is focusing more on Balochistan in its Safe Motherhood campaign. As part of this initiative, a meeting was held with 20 different civil society organizations of Balochistan during which WPF briefed them on maternal mortality situation in the province. Consequently all participants agreed on formulating a support group for this cause.

Moreover, with the firm support of Dr. Ruqaiya Saeed Hashmi WPF, Pakistan organized a Forum with 12 provincial ministers and Members of Provincial Assembly (MPA) on 12 May, 2010. The Forum resolved to draft a resolution on reducing MMR for tabling in next Assembly session. Prior to this meeting 37 MPAs and ministers took part in the signature campaign of WPF, Pakistan by signing the petition that demands to make motherhood safer for all women in Pakistan.

Empowering Girls – Transforming Communities

A baseline action research of the two districts (Gujranwala and Sanghar) of the Packard Foundation funded project, 'Empowering Girls-Transforming Communities' was carried out by an independent agency. The main objective of the baseline action research was to assess the indicators and current situation on Reproductive Health, Life Skills and socio-economic empowerment of adolescent girls in the two districts. This baseline will serve as a basis for project intervention, particularly in secondary girls’ schools.

Implementing partners of the project, Bargad and Sindh Agricultural Forestry Workers Coordinating Organization (SAFWCO) were involved in carrying out the baseline in close alliance with WPF and the consultant. Therefore, to develop a clear understanding of the findings, realise and reflect on all aspects of the research and its findings, a meeting of WPF Management Team and the consultant was held at WPF office on 20th April 2010, where the former presented the methodology and findings of the research.

As a follow-up step, the consultant will be sharing the baseline’s findings with the two partners before it is formally launched with other stakeholders in the districts.

Formal Education System

Monitoring and Evaluation Visit Undertaken to Quetta

A three member WPF team comprising of Country Representative, Programme Manager We Act and Programme Officer SRHR Education undertook a Monitoring and Evaluation visit to Quetta to assess the progress of the activities and determine whether there has been any behavioral/ attitudinal change in students who have gone through Level 1 of the curriculum and whether or not they are ready to commence Level 2.

During the sessions with students, there were obvious differences amongst the students of the same section who had gone through LSBE Level 1 curriculum and those who had not. The LSBE students were confident, much more forthcoming and got their point of view across clearly. The teachers shared that the students who had gone through the LSBE curriculum had shown improvement in their academic results. While the heads of schools and teachers were keen on continuing with LSBE and gave testaments about the effectiveness of the programme, elementary school principals also shared their interest in introducing LSBE in their schools.

As a follow-up step to the visit it was decided that a refresher training for the teachers will be organized while an orientation session with school heads will also be held. Moreover, the possibility of introducing LSBE curriculum in elementary schools will also be explored further with Provincial Education Department.

Rights-driven Institutionalization of Sexual and Reproductive Health in Pakistan

Programme Manager IS and Programme Officer IS held a meeting with the team of AWAZ-CDS team at their Multan office on 16th April, 2010 to discuss the project progress.

On 17th April, field visits to two girls’ and boys’ schools were also undertaken to review the implementation status of SRHR education. Teachers and school heads appreciated the introduction of SRHR education and shared that this programme had not only given confidence to their students but had also helped in enhancing their own professional skills.

Gender Based Violence and Reproductive Health

Country Representative and the members of IS team traveled to D.G. Khan on 15th and 16th April 2010 to hold a consultation with the members of Pakistan Gender Based Violence Reproductive Health Network. The meeting was organized by PGRN secretariat that is currently being hosted by Al-Asar Development Organization. Nine participants from 6 GBV-RH partners also participated.

During the course of the meeting the logic model and work plan for next phase of the GBV-RH project was shared with the participants and a common understanding on the goal, objectives and work plan was reached. Partners shared information on their GBV-RH interventions in their respective areas during the last 3 months which included awareness-raising sessions for women, responses to GBV-RH violation cases, publication of articles on GBV-RH in the Network’s newsletter etc.

Logo for the Network was finalized in the meeting, which will be used for its website, its newsletter and IEC etc. It was decided that PGRN will be working and managed independently while technical and financial support will be sought from WPF.

The 2-day consultative process concluded with a formal inauguration of PGRN at Al-Asar Development Organization. Members of PGRN board who are the heads of the 6 partner organizations and WPF team participated in the ceremony.

In the month of April WPF provided the following technical support by developing:

• List serve of Yahoo group for PGRN members for sharing and disseminating information
• Designed guidelines of list serve to facilitate membership in PGRN
• A web domain of WPF for PGRN to meet the objectives of the project
• Goal, objectives, guidelines and protocols of PGRN

Where mother doesn’t have the opportunity to take care of her child because she passed away during child birth, our society’s reaction towards that child is no less than a leftover soul. We lack proper infrastructure and mechanism to accommodate and bring up these children constructively. Even if we establish such mechanisms for these children we may be able to meet their corporeal needs only. The essence of nearness and shelter which a child gets from mother’s lap has no surrogate in our synthetically formed mechanisms. Simultaneously, we cannot pay compensation adjacent to physical fatigue and steady patience of nine months time to the mother who passed by during childbirth. The lists of negative effects linked with mothers becoming extinct in pregnancy are endless and costly too.

The dilemma starts from the point where people take these deaths as part of natural phenomena, arguing that maternal deaths are as natural a phenomenon as the incidence of pregnancy. Such attitude is highly unacceptable in the face of the fact that 80 percent of the maternal deaths are actually preventable. In rural areas especially women are known to become prey to dogmatic norms; they can’t see a doctor during pregnancy simply because the male heads of their families do not permit!

While Pakistan is a signatory of the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution on “Preventable Maternal Mortality and Morbidity and Human Rights”, thousands of avoidable maternal deaths continue to occur every year. In order to achieve the target set in MDG 5, Pakistan needs to gear up efforts to ensure that it meets the challenge of maternal deaths successfully.

Moreover, a sound mechanism of transparency and monitoring in utilization of funds remains a neglected area so far. This is one of the reasons why we are yet to see any substantial change towards the improvement of maternal health situation in Pakistan.

Secondly change in attitudes is perhaps another challenge for closed societies where women are expected to live as the shadow of the men their households. There is no escape for the women still in many parts of the country from this unspoken imprisonment they face, in which all decisions about them and their lives are made by their custodians. Women are expected to carry out pregnancy and birth in absence of basic physical amenities. This behavior leads to grave risks that are linked to pregnancy and in most of the situation cause irrevocable damage like maternal mortality. 30,000 deaths per year means 82 deaths in a day and 3 women giving up their lives within every one hour is a stern reality of Pakistan. Majority women die from causes that are largely preventable. Reducing this toll in line with Millennium Development Goals depends largely on every mother and every child having the right to access to health care from pregnancy through childbirth, the neonatal period and childhood. We might not be able to fully quantify in dollar terms the social and economic implications from maternal mortality. What we can quantify is the care and attention we give to the next pregnant woman we come in contact with. Thirdly Lack of awareness among females about their sexual and reproductive health rights have given leverage to society to control their crucial health related issues.

Along with the poor accessibility and availability of health services the burden of closely spaced pregnancies poses a major threat to the life of women. It is high time that we snap back to reality and comprehend the fact that currently only 28 percent of married women use any form of contraception while the total unmet need is estimated at 46 per cent.

Any woman can experience sudden and unexpected complications during pregnancy, childbirth, and/or just after delivery. Although high-quality, accessible health care has made maternal death a rare event in developed countries; these complications can often be fatal in the developing world. The death or disability of a woman, a tragedy in itself, adversely affects the health of her children, household productivity and the national economy. The media also has a role to highlight some of the preventable causes of maternal mortality. Instead of only reinforcing some of the discriminatory practices against women, it should challenge policy makers to think and question existing conventions on issues like early marriages and Gender Based Violence.

Maternal mortality is fed by a myriad of other issues that verge on social inequities and it is a little wonder that the scourge is widely prominent among poor section of population. The age-long causes of maternal mortality are hemorrhage, infections, malaria, high blood pressure and unsafe abortion. These public health issues are the indicators in themselves of larger ills like the dearth of information on family planning, early marriage, unaffordable cost of health care, poor hygiene and nutrition. These factors often receive acknowledgement in discussions in talk shows and conferences, where they are disapproved and denounced. Those of us, who had the privilege of mothers if compare notes with those deprived of this awesome gift of the Divine, will not waste time and resources in cosmetic efforts at tackling maternal mortality as this matter needs more concerted actions to preserve the lives of our women at child birth.

Catholics Call on Pope Benedict to Reconsider Vatican's Ban on Contraceptive Pill

Three different layers of a Vatican commission approved the pill back in 1965. But Pope Paul VI decided to ignore the findings of those panels and condemned Catholic women to a variety of unreliable methods if they were to follow the Vatican's dictates. To this day, most Catholic women ignore the Vatican's decree, and many millions of them have safer and more reliable family planning thanks to Dr. Rock's pill.

Three different layers of a Vatican commission approved the pill back in 1965. But Pope Paul VI decided to ignore the findings of those panels and condemned Catholic women to a variety of unreliable methods if they were to follow the Vatican's dictates. To this day, most Catholic women ignore the Vatican's decree, and many millions of them have safer and more reliable family planning thanks to Dr. Rock's pill.

The story of the pill's genesis is a fascinating one. John Rock was an infertility expert who was a pioneer behind many modern methods of assisting couples to conceive. In the course of his work, he also met many fertile Catholic women who wanted to space the births of their children, and sometimes to avoid having children. The Vatican's ban on artificial methods of contraception meant that they had to rely on so-called natural methods, when a couple can only have sexual intercourse during the time each month when a woman is infertile if they want to avoid pregnancy. This was unacceptable to many, unworkable for those who have unreliable cycles and impossible for women who could not negotiate their sexual relationship with their partners.

There is little need to reconvene a commission to study this issue. Not much has changed to negate the findings of the majority votes in the commission. Indeed, we have learned so much more about safe reproductive health that supports the real world application of the commission's findings. It makes no sense to continue the Vatican's wrong-headed approach to family planning. Even without the twin scourges of maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS, there are billions of good reasons to allow women to plan their families and to allow them to decide when and whether to have children: namely the 3.5 billion women in the world, of whom about 600 million are Catholic.

It would be a lasting and wholly positive legacy if the current pope got behind the majority report of the 1963-68 commission and lifted the ban on the use of contraceptives to allow Catholics to plan their families. Given the fact that today, in the United States, 97 percent of sexually active Catholic women above the age of 18 have used some form of contraception banned by the Vatican, it makes little sense to continue the ban. In fact, the ban does more harm to the Vatican and its teaching authority than would changing it.

Dr. Rock was a Catholic champion of women's health. If the Vatican wants to regain some relevance and respect on this issue, it's time to join him in his support for contraception.

For more information please logon to: www.wpfpak.org

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