When a doctor isn’t present during a birth, there’s one essential person who can be the difference between life and death: a midwife.
They are extremely valuable, especially in countries where having a baby is still dangerous, because they have the training needed to deliver a baby safely and can adapt quickly when common complications arise.
But the availability of midwives, and the tools needed to keep mothers and their babies alive, is decreasing, due to President Donald Trump’s deep cuts to foreign aid.
Around the world, women and girls have been hit disproportionately by foreign aid cuts. In a United Nations survey of women-led and women’s rights organizations that rely on foreign assistance, almost half said that funding cuts would force them to shut down this year, caught in the crosshairs of America’s culture wars. They include midwifery schools, maternal health clinics, and rape crisis centers.
And in some parts of the world, there is no funding for maternal health at all absent foreign aid, because the domestic government is either too poor or lacks the will to pay for it itself.
“It’s an erosion of progress,” said Samira Sayed Rahman, programs and advocacy director of Save the Children in Afghanistan. There, one person dies every two hours from pregnancy-related complications. “It’s years of investments in health, in education, in community-building that have been undone in the span of a few months, and in some instances, in a few days.”
🎨: Claire Merchlinsky for Vox 📸: Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images
Vox
When a doctor isn’t present during a birth, there’s one essential person who can be the difference between life and death: a midwife.
They are extremely valuable, especially in countries where having a baby is still dangerous, because they have the training needed to deliver a baby safely and can adapt quickly when common complications arise.
But the availability of midwives, and the tools needed to keep mothers and their babies alive, is decreasing, due to President Donald Trump’s deep cuts to foreign aid.
Around the world, women and girls have been hit disproportionately by foreign aid cuts. In a United Nations survey of women-led and women’s rights organizations that rely on foreign assistance, almost half said that funding cuts would force them to shut down this year, caught in the crosshairs of America’s culture wars. They include midwifery schools, maternal health clinics, and rape crisis centers.
And in some parts of the world, there is no funding for maternal health at all absent foreign aid, because the domestic government is either too poor or lacks the will to pay for it itself.
“It’s an erosion of progress,” said Samira Sayed Rahman, programs and advocacy director of Save the Children in Afghanistan. There, one person dies every two hours from pregnancy-related complications. “It’s years of investments in health, in education, in community-building that have been undone in the span of a few months, and in some instances, in a few days.”
🎨: Claire Merchlinsky for Vox
📸: Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images
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