THE APPEAL
Every year in Sub-Saharan Africa, about 200,000 mothers die as a result of complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Because of this, each year around one million children are left without a mother. Most of these deaths are easily preventable as they are the result of a simple lack of access to basic medical care.
Midwives Save Lives
With the Stand Up for African Mothers campaign, AMREF aims to train 15,000 additional African midwives by 2015. Once trained, we expect these midwives to be able to provide care for and health education to over seven million women each year.
A healthy Africa needs healthy mothers and African mothers need African midwives.
Please be assured that AMREF does not share any of its supporter’s details with any other organisation.
3/10/11 Launching of the campaign at the Women’s Forum
As part of the Women for Education initiative, the STAND UP FOR AFRICAN MOTHERS international awareness campaign will be launched on October 13, 2011 by Véronique Morali, President of the Women's Forum, and Teguest Guerma, International Director of AMREF.
The international mobilization of STAND UP FOR AFRICAN MOTHERS, launched by AMREF, will help reduce maternal mortality in Africa by 25%, mainly by training 15,000 midwives by 2015. One trained midwife means that 1,000 women receive aid each year and thousands of mothers and babies are saved !
STAND UP FOR AFRICAN MOTHERS will also support the highly symbolic candidacy of an African midwife for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize.
Several celebrities have worked as ambassadors for this international campaign, including Liya Kebede and Caterina Murino, who has said that "one in 31 women who risk dying in childbirth is one of the world’s greatest inequalities! As a woman, I feel it my duty to ensure that no woman should die when giving life. One of life’s most beautiful events should no longer be a drama in Africa!"
Women for Education and all its partners, ELLE, the Women's Forum, Fondation ELLE and Sanofi Espoir Foundation support this international action that will be launched officially at the Women's Forum. In parallel, the Fondation ELLE and Sanofi Espoir Foundation have also pledged to work with AMREF to support its field activities in a number of African countries including Uganda, Senegal, and Southern Sudan.
Created in 2007 by ELLE magazine, the Fondation ELLE and the Women's Forum, Women for Education honors each year an international NGO working to train women in developing countries. The five projects in Afghanistan, India, Mexico, Ethiopia and Haiti have all won awards at Deauville over the past four years.