World Water Day highlights need, opportunity to reduce maternal mortality
Yesterday, March 22, 2010, was World Water Day as declared by the United Nations; most people missed it, but we shouldn’t have. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a very important statement, which reads in part:
Water is the source of life and the link that binds all living beings on this planet. It is connected directly to all our United Nations goals: improved maternal and child health and life expectancy, women's empowerment, food security, sustainable development and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Recognition of these links led to the declaration of 2005-2015 as the International Decade for Action "Water for Life."Scott Fischbach, Executive Director of MCCL Global Outreach, is pleased with the Secretary-General's statement regarding the link between safe water and maternal mortality.
"For too long the obvious facts have been overlooked in trying to reduce maternal mortality rates in developing countries," Fischbach says. "It is clean water, a clean blood supply and an adequate health care delivery system that can prevent maternal deaths, not legalized abortion as some have suggested."
In connection with World Water Day, the U.N. released a report entitled "Sick Water," in which it claims:
1. 3.7 percent of all deaths world wide are attributable to unclean water.
2. More that half of all the hospital beds in the world are occupied by patients sick from contaminated water.
3. 2 billion tons of contaminated water are discharged every day on the planet.
Working towards an adequate supply of clean water, clean blood supply and health care services not only will help all human beings, but women and pregnant women will benefit the most.
"Focusing on these three areas will bring us closer to fulfilling Millennium Development Goal 5—to reduce maternal mortality—than any and all efforts to legalize abortion in developing countries," Fischbach adds.
MCCL GO is the international outreach arm of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL), the state's oldest and largest pro-life organization.
