Here in the U.S. pregnant women focus, sometimes obsessively, on diet, nutrition and prenatal vitamins -- and debate about use of epidurals or C-section rates. But in the developing world, getting just the most basic information to pregnant women and new mothers has been a monumental task, and that lack of information contributes to high mortality rates.
Every day about 800 women in the developing world die during pregnancy or childbirth and more than 3 million newborns die of preventable illnesses every year, Kristen Gagnaire told me recently. She was in San Francisco spreading the word about MAMA, the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action. Gagnaire is MAMA's global director and a firm believer in the power of education to make a difference. She's working to get information out to help save lives via a surprisingly simple platform: the mobile phone.
MAMA is a global public-private partnership launched two years ago by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. USAID, Johnson & Johnson and the U.N. Foundation are all involved. And so is San Francisco's BabyCenter (a division of Johnson & Johnson) where we met, along with Colleen Hancock, BabyCenter's global chief operating officer. On its website BabyCenter says one its main areas is to provide "expert advice" about pregnancy, childbirth, babies, toddlers and more. It is a trusted source for women in the U.S. and other western countries.
The idea was to adapt the BabyCenter model for cultures in the developing world and send out text messages to give women "critical health information about how to take care of themselves, how to give care to their babies and when and how to seek help" from trained health care providers, Gagnaire said.
"The fetus develops in the same way in a mother, whether she's in Zambia or she's in California or she's in the UK," added Hancock. According to MAMA's website, the messages are developed around evidence-based key health behaviors and interventions that can improve health outcomes.