Moving forward with maternal health and human rights

An article from The Lancet on the recent UN resolution regarding women's health:


500 000 women die each year as a result of pregnancy or
childbirth. Eff orts are being made to reduce these deaths
by three quarters by 2015—Millennium Development
Goal 5. But many countries are not making substantial
progress towards this target. Can the human-rights
community help?
Last week, the UN Human Rights Council passed a landmark
resolution that recognises preventable maternal
mortality and morbidity as a pressing human-rights issue
that violates a woman’s rights to health, life, edu cation,
dignity, and information. The move is important because
a human-rights approach to maternal health places
specifi c legal and ethical obligations on states, such as the
establishment of eff ective mechanisms of accounta bility
(ie, maternal death audits or reviews). The approach also
reinforces equity, so it insists on disaggregated data on
maternal mortality and morbidity rates to see if vulnerable
groups are benefi ting from health programmes.
The resolution signals an increasing trend by the
human-rights community to take health issues as
seriously as they have taken issues such as torture, the
death penalty, and the right to a fair trial. For example,
in May, Amnesty International—the world’s largest
international voluntary organisation dealing with human
rights—launched, for the fi rst time, a global campaign to
address maternal mortality.
These eff orts should be welcomed by the health
community. As well as increased attention and resources
for maternal health, a human-rights approach to maternal
health can strengthen policies and programmes and make
them more equitable. But this movement needs the active
support and engagement of more health professionals
to succeed. The diffi culty is that the health community
has often misunderstood human rights to be solely
about whistleblowing, lawyers, and litigation. The health
community must be willing to learn about human rights,
realise the common ground, and work with human-rights
professionals in a respectful, constructive, and practical
partnership to prevent the unacceptably high number of
maternal deaths that occur each year. ■ The Lancet