Summary:
CARD Mutually Reinforcing Institutions (CARD MRI), the Microcredit Summit Campaign, and Freedom from Hunger announced that under the “Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies” program, some 800,000 women have received maternal health education in the past 5 months and 3600 women have received healthcare in the past 12 months. The project aims to improve maternal health alongside their microfinance services in the Philippines, accelerating achievement of UN Millennium Development Goal 5.
WASHINGTON, D.C. [September 24]—Partners in a joint-program aiming to improve maternal health in the Philippines announced today that they provided more than 800,000 women with maternal health services in the past year. CARD Mutually Reinforcing Institutions (CARD MRI), the Microcredit Summit Campaign, and Freedom from Hunger began rolling out health education in April to poor and rural communities in Luzon, Mindanao, and, notably, the Visayas, which had catastrophic destruction in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan. With the support of program partners, CARD MRI trained more than 1,000 account officers (AOs) in 14,650 centers to deliver the health education to CARD members. The AOs educated an average of 5,000 women per day over the last five months on important maternal health issues. Each woman received two hours of instruction on simple but important lessons like the food and nutritional supplements that pregnant and young women need and the importance of giving birth in a health facility. Español | Français | Continue reading
