Yesterday I had the opportunity of addressing several Ministers at the Scottish Parliament, as well as members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association on the topic of Malawi, a country with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, where one woman out of thirty-six dies while giving birth, or from pregnancy related problems. 90% of those problems are considered to be preventable, yet despite the desperate need in Malawi, and other countries in Africa and Latin America, millions of women continue to lack access to basic reproductive health services.50% of Malawi’s population is under the age of fifteen, with 64% of young women having babies before their twentieth birthday. The country’s fertility rate currently stands at 5.7 births per mother. One out of four women in Malawi still cannot obtain contraception. This is also a contributing factor to the high mortality rate.Contraceptive use jumped from 7 % in 1992, to 42% in 2010, while according to USAID, the population sky rocketed from approximately 3 million in 1950, to 15 million in 2010. At that rate, if nothing changes, the nation’s population is projected to reach 50 million by 2050…
From the perspective of half the population living below the poverty line on less than a dollar a day, it doesn’t take much to calculate that urgent measures need to be taken for the future to be sustainable. President Joyce Banda has massive challenges to face, and reproductive health is just ONE of the issues..
One thing I found out recently is the following…
A report compelled by Edinburgh University in 2010 revealed that an estimated number of 85,000 people in Scotland regularly give their time, resources and energy to helping Malawi, valuing the input by Scottish voluntary organisations in the region of £30 million a year. Take a bow Scotland’s champion volunteers!