As the world of commerce "works" consumers to spend and buy and perhaps even think of Mum too, Nicholas D Kristof in his latest op-ed piece for The New York Times provides a sober thought of what we might more profitably consider as we honor mothers around the world.
"If there’s ever a time when the needless deaths of women in childbirth — one every 90 seconds or so somewhere in the world, according to the United Nations — should be on our radar screen, it’s at Mother’s Day. And we know how to save those lives.
CARE says that $10 pays for food for three days at a hospital for an expectant mother. When food is provided, a woman is more likely to deliver at a hospital. Or with $190, CARE can buy a bicycle rickshaw ambulance to rush a woman in labor to a hospital.
Save the Children runs a midwife training program in Afghanistan (where women are 200 times more likely to die in childbirth than from a bullet or bomb, the group says) and points out that $80 will pay for a midwifery kit for new graduates. And for $450, the Fistula Foundation can repair a woman suffering from an obstetric fistula, a devastating childbirth injury that leaves her leaking wastes.
In a column a year ago, I suggested that we move the apostrophe so as to celebrate not so much Mother’s Day — honoring a single mother — but Mothers’ Day, to help save mothers’ lives around the world as well."
"If there’s ever a time when the needless deaths of women in childbirth — one every 90 seconds or so somewhere in the world, according to the United Nations — should be on our radar screen, it’s at Mother’s Day. And we know how to save those lives.
CARE says that $10 pays for food for three days at a hospital for an expectant mother. When food is provided, a woman is more likely to deliver at a hospital. Or with $190, CARE can buy a bicycle rickshaw ambulance to rush a woman in labor to a hospital.
Save the Children runs a midwife training program in Afghanistan (where women are 200 times more likely to die in childbirth than from a bullet or bomb, the group says) and points out that $80 will pay for a midwifery kit for new graduates. And for $450, the Fistula Foundation can repair a woman suffering from an obstetric fistula, a devastating childbirth injury that leaves her leaking wastes.
In a column a year ago, I suggested that we move the apostrophe so as to celebrate not so much Mother’s Day — honoring a single mother — but Mothers’ Day, to help save mothers’ lives around the world as well."
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