Global Health For A Globally Minded President

President-elect Barack Obama can build on historic initiatives championed by his predecessor in global AIDS and malaria. These should serve as the platform for a more comprehensive and evidence-based set of activities aimed at addressing the major causes of ill health and instability in low-income countries. Obama should launch a new Global Family Health Action Plan aimed at saving the lives of six million children and women annually in impoverished nations. Existing policies driven by U.S. domestic ideological battles, particularly those relating to sexual and reproductive health, should be revised and brought into line with solid science and evidence from the field.

[Health Affairs 28, no. 2 (2009): w199-w204 (published online 16 January 2009; 10.1377/hlthaff.28.2.w199)]

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.28.2.w199/DC1

Report on Maternal & Newborn Health (UNICEF)

This report calls attention to the fact that women in the world’s least developed countries are 300 times more likely to die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications than women in developed countries.

The health of these mothers is inextricably linked to the health of their babies, the new report points out. A child born in a developing country is almost 14 times more likely to die during the first month of life than a child born in a developed one.

http://www.unicef.org/sowc09/docs/SOWC09-FullReport-EN.pdf