UN Commitment

The Rotary Maternal Health Project, initiated by RFPD, has been included into the list of UN Commitments 2011. This makes RFPD one of about 200 organizations, including 50 governments, which committed to promote and implement the UN Global Strategy on Women’s and Children’s Health. Rotary International has offered its new Area of Focus ‘Maternal and Child Health’ to the UN. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited all organizations that made a commitment to a special event on 20th September 2011, in which PDG Zinser, as CEO of RFPD, participated.

In its commitment, RFPD is offering its model to reduce maternal and newborn mortality that was developed within the pilot project (2005-2010) to all Rotary clubs and districts. You can find the methodology of this comprehensive approach including quality assurance in obstetrics here. 1,000 women globally are dying each day during pregnancy, shortly before, after or while giving birth. Governments, foundations, companies and other organizations have pledged 40 billion US dollar over the next five years to remedy this situation. This also is a benefit for the world economy as such a high number of maternal and child deaths slow the economic growth globally, reducing productivity by 15 billion US dollar. Concerted and integrated health care for mother and child has a considerable multiplier effect on all UN Millennium Development Goals. It is cost-effective, reduces poverty and builds strong and peaceful communities.

RFPD's UN Commitment (2011):

The Rotarian Action Group for Population and Sustainable Development (RFPD) commits to offer the methodology and findings of its pilot project to reduce maternal and newborn mortality, implemented between 2005 and 2010, to Rotary's worldwide network of clubs. By implementing this comprehensive approach including quality assurance in obstetrics in 10 selected general hospitals in the states of Kano and Kaduna, Nigeria, RFPD reduced the average maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by 60%, from 1,790/100,000 to 710/100,000, within two years. Together with Rotary Clubs and supported by The Rotary Foundation, RFPD is preparing the scaling up of the 'Kano and Kaduna model' in other states of Nigeria and the German government has offered to co-fund this scaling up with 1 million Euros. RFPD offers advice to all Rotary Clubs worldwide on how to adapt, implement and scale up this successful approach to reduce maternal and newborn mortality in other developing regions/countries and provides a comprehensive set of indicators for an adequate and effective monitoring and measuring of progress. Interested stakeholders are invited to join RFPD's efforts. This comprehensive approach leads to improvements of health systems in developing countries, saves lives of mothers and their newborns and strengthens families and communities. The methodology and results are published in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics and will be published in detail on www.maternal-health.org.


To see all 2011 commitments to 'Every Woman Every Child' click here [1.405 KB] or visit www.everywomaneverychild.org