he startling statistics on maternal and infant mortality offer perhaps the most disheartening evidence of human poverty.  These statistics exceed the worst tragedies that we read about in Honduras, Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor etc.  Worse - these human tragedies occur daily, year in and year out.

A German Red Cross worker holds a one  month-old baby as he takes his last breath and dies.  His mother died giving birth to him one month ago. The boy's relatives kept him barely alive on sugar and water.  But without mother's milk, he couldn't survive.

     Each day over 37,000 children age five and below die from starvation - that's 13 million children every year. (Starvation due to internal wars accounts for less than 10%)

     585,000 mothers die every year, or one mother every minute from the Reproductive Health causes of:

• Abortion
• Childbirth
• Complications of Pregnancy.

Rotary International is now moving to address these human tragedies through its programs of  Humanitarian Service.

Necessary measures for
Safe Motherhood Means....

1. Programs to empower women and ensure their choices. Gender inequalities and discrimination limit women's choices and contribute to their ill health and death
    
2. Programs that address unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion.  Unsafe abortion is the most neglected and most easily preventable cause of maternal death.  These deaths can be significantly reduced by ensuring that safe motherhood programs include voluntary family planning services to prevent unwanted pregnancies
    
3. Detection and treatment of not only HIV but, reproductive tract cancer, and all Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD's) and Reproductive Tract Infections( RTI's) including Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Herpes, Human papillomavirus (genital warts), and Syphilis