New program to improve maternal health in the Philippines to provide 600,000 women with health services
San Pablo City, Philippines [October 17, 2014]—At an event today in San Pablo City, Philippines, CARD Mutually Reinforcing Institutions (CARD MRI), the Microcredit Summit Campaign, and Freedom from Hunger launched a joint program called “Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies: Kalinga kay Inay,” which aims to decrease the high maternal mortality rate in the Philippines, thus helping to address the country’s poor performance on Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5.
“Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies” will reach more than 600,000 women microfinance clients by the end of 2015 by leveraging the reach of the microfinance sector to deliver vital health education and services to very poor women and their families. The program will kick off this weekend with a two-day community health fair in Palawan for some 1,000 pregnant and lactating women. The health fair will be open to microfinance clients of ASA Philippines and CARD MRI as well as non-client members of the local community. Four general practitioners, thirteen OB-GYNs, and one sonologist will provide their services with no charge. Also, pregnant women who take advantage of this opportunity can get their ultrasound results immediately. This health fair is the first of five community-based “Healthy Mother, Healthy Baby” health fairs.
October 17th is also the World Day for Overcoming Extreme Poverty, and the theme for 2014 is “Leave No One Behind: Think, Decide and Act Together Against Extreme Poverty.” At the launch event, Larry Reed, director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, delivered a keynote message explaining that, in order to end extreme poverty, the system that has created the poverty we see has to change. He said, “Part of the system that needs to be changed is the way that different types of social programs work in isolation from one another… As a result, we often miss the interrelationships between the challenges we face. When instead we work together on the goal of eliminating extreme poverty and its many pernicious effects, we quickly see how we need to coordinate our efforts to have maximum impact.”
Dr. Jaime Aristotle B. Alip, the founder and managing director of CARD MRI said during the launch that, “We are thankful of this partnership with Freedom from Hunger and Microcredit Summit Campaign. With this partnership, we hope that we will be able to reach more socially-and-economically challenged Filipinos especially those in their reproductive age. We hope that maternal mortality among CARD members will significantly decrease due to this partnership.”
Economic growth in the Philippines has been very strong over the past 20 years—growing an average of more than 5 percent per year for the last 10 years according to the “Philippines Fifth Progress Report on the MDGs”—and the nation has improved in many key indicators such as life expectancy, access to education, and infant mortality. Delays in accessing medical care is a key bottleneck in achieving MDG5, and with just under 500 days left, the timing for this collaboration to educate about and expand access to health services is critical.