• Jump to main text
• Home
• About
  • Our Work
  • How We Help
  • Partners
  • Our Team
  • Contact
• What We Do
  • Family Planning and
    Reproductive Health
  • Gender
  • HIV
  • Maternal Health
  • All Topics
• Countries
  • Africa
  • Asia and the Middle East
  • Europe and Eurasia (E&E)
  • Latin America and the Caribbean
    (LAC)
• Resources
  • Publications (now on HP+)
  • Software and Models
  • News
  • Viewpoints
  • eLearning
  • Links

Respectful maternity care an emerging theme at the Global Maternal Health Conference

Posted by Mande Limbu, Maternal Health Technical Advisor
January 24, 2013

As part of the Health Policy Project (HPP), the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood (WRA), in collaboration with the USAID TRAction Project, Averting Maternal Death and Disability, and the Population Council, hosted a luncheon event which brought together 40 partners to exchange experiences and ideas. Photo by Health Policy Project/White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood.

ARUSHA, Tanzania—The Global Maternal Health Conference 2013 was held Jan. 15-17, 2013 in Tanzania, with more than 700 participants -- implementers, researchers, policy makers, donors, and other stakeholders with a passion to improve the health of mothers and children. The theme of the conference was “improving quality of care” and the format provided opportunities for dialogue, allowing participants to share success stories and explore efforts for collaboration to improve the health of mothers.

The key message that emerged from the conference is that improving the quality of care is a crucial step in maternal health, now that progress has been made in expanding access to services. While important work has been done, there are still programmatic questions that need to be addressed, particularly how to ensure maternal healthcare that women receive is respectful and of good quality.

While the conference covered many maternal health topics, respectful maternity care had a newly prominent role on the agenda. One speaker, an advocate for respectful care, said, “We have broken through!”

As part of the Health Policy Project (HPP), the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood (WRA), in collaboration with the USAID TRAction Project, Averting Maternal Death and Disability, and the Population Council, hosted a luncheon event which brought together 40 partners to exchange experiences and ideas. The goal of this gathering was to expand and strengthen the community of concern and engage global players in advancing the respectful maternity care agenda.

WRA also had the honor to participate on a panel during a plenary session about respectful maternal healthcare on the final day of the conference. The session was met with a tremendously positive response from the global maternal health community, donors, and importantly, policy makers. The participants displayed a high level of interest in advocating for respectful maternity care, indicating that it is becoming an important element in the global maternal health community’s agenda, especially in light of the post-Millennium Development Goals framework for maternal health.

HPP is committed to improving the quality of care and making sure women throughout the world receive respectful maternity care during pregnancy, childbirth, and in the period after delivery.

Mande Limbu, Maternal Health Technical Advisr for the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, manages Health Policy Project activities that improve maternal health by promoting respectful maternity care and advocating for improved status and working conditions for midwives.

For more information about the Global Maternal Health Conference, visit the official website
Learn more about Health Policy Project activities in respectful maternity care