Contacts
English
Français
Statement by Dr. Nafis Sadik
Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General
for HIV/AIDS in Asia
at the
Women Deliver Conference,
Washington, D.C.
Moderator – Session 217: Do you want to know?
Our life, our words, our stories…
8 June 2010
In last week’s special Women Deliver edition of The Lancet, Richard Horton said that the global health community needs to listen harder to the voices from countries where most maternal and child deaths take place. That is exactly what we are going to do here today. Our speakers today have all shown by their lives and work how important it is for each woman to fight and win her individual battle for sexual and reproductive health; and how important it is that all of us join together to help each other in the struggle. None of us can win on our own – but together, we can all succeed.
Two of our panellists have overcome obstetric fistula. Fistula is a birth injury that is all too common where women give birth too young and medical services are inadequate. I am very proud that the United Nations, and especially UNFPA, led by Thoraya Obaid, has been a leader in bringing obstetric fistula to the world’s attention. Since 2003 the campaign has helped to make fistula a global concern, with a wide range of partners including Ted Turner’s UN Foundation, regional organizations like AMREF, and national institutions like the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. Most important, their work will protect many more women from suffering the agony and stigma of fistula.
Awatif Hussain’s story is typical: pregnant and married at 16 in Darfur Province, Sudan, she was in labour at home for two days before she was taken to hospital. She lost her child and developed obstetric fistula. But it didn’t take too long before she took this experience and transformed her life. Awatif studied midwifery and made it her personal and professional mission to ensure that no other women should suffer like she did.
Our other fistula survivor and campaigner is Sarah Omega from Kenya. Sarah appeared before Congress here in the United States in 2008 to appeal for priority for maternal health and women’s empowerment.
Laxmi Tamang from Nepal is a midwife and community activist. Her own mother’s painful experience during pregnancy and childbirth and her own personal year-long hospitalization propelled her to a career as a health care provider.
She exemplifies the importance of treating each woman both as an individual with her own unique importance, and also as a vital member of her community. We cannot separate individual care from community values and standards. To the extent that women are respected and valued not merely for their work – as wives and mothers and providers for the family –but simply as women – their health and wellbeing will be respected and valued. It’s not enough to point to women’s contribution. We must continue to insist that women are of equal value just because they are women. I believe that is the significance of the global consensus in Cairo and Beijing – and that is why it has been so important to insist that sexual and reproductive health must become an explicit part of the Millennium Development Goals.
We have insisted for many years that education, health care and social empowerment for girls and women are the pillars on which development will be built. We have also insisted that these things are important for their own sake, because women are important for their own sake. I believe the stories you are about to hear will illustrate these points better than anything I can say.
Thank you.
