Mother and child in India.

This month Vitamin Angels observes International Women’s Day (March 8th) by recognizing the history of maternal health in the US and by acting on the inequalities facing new mothers in our global community. According to the United Nations, the first International Women’s Day was observed in 1909, a year that also marked the beginning of organized prenatal care in the US. This included the development of intensive prenatal care for women with special health care needs, wide-scale creation of outpatient clinics for prenatal care, and the beginning of the American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality.

Tragically, today, vast global disparities of wealth and unequal access to maternal healthcare have left women in the developing world behind. The World Health Organization estimates that “Each day, approximately 1,000 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth,…99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries…[and] more than half of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and one third occur in South Asia.”* In the spirit of International Women’s Day, we encourage readers to help shift the tides of global maternal equality by:

1) Learning more about Vitamin Angels and millennium development goal (MDG) 5 to reduce maternal mortality worldwide>>

2) Donating $10 to provide a year supply of prenatal vitamins for a new or expecting mother in need>>

*WHO Maternal mortality key facts