A safe maternity and a conscious understanding of reproductive health.
20% of all global births take place in Africa; 40% of global deaths during childbirth take place in Africa. Many of these deaths would be avoidable if there was accessible health care and adequate health services.
Amref’s strategy for the protection of reproductive health in Africa is through women’s roles during pregnancy, from the guarantee of continuous sanitary assistance to the prevention of infections and complication during childbirth.
Maternity care:
AMREF recommends increasing the number of medical centres that specialise in obstetrics and neonatal care. Furthermore, Amref hopes to provide African women with the possibility to live the critical stage of labour in a protected environment thanks to adequate sanitation. The fundamental objective of this assistance is to reduce the number of maternal and postnatal complications in mother and child, for example, obstetric fistula, which cripples the mother and provokes incontinence, which often causes the death of the newborn.
Reproductive health and women’s’ rights:
The key elements that Amref ensures so as to guarantee women’s’ rights and the ability to manage reproductive health are through family planning and helping young people and, especially, young African girls – and their communities that they belong to – to become more aware of fertility and reproductive health in general. Amref’s work also addresses destructive social practices, which are unfortunately still practised, such as domestic violence and female circumcision, which further reduces women’s autonomy within their communities.
