"Save A Mother"

This is the time of the year that most people in the US, including me, make their annual charitable contributions. My formula for "giving" is roughly a 70/30 one. Seventy percent of my contributions go to US organizations working either within the US or engaged in international relief efforts. The other thirty percent goes to worthy humanitarian and philanthropic causes in India.

The Indian or Indian American charities that I support are usually small, and their sponsors are often people that friends, family members or I myself know and admire. Recently I became involved with Save A Mother, a foundation that does most of its fundraising in the US to benefit rural outreach programs in India that promote, facilitate and raise awareness of maternal health care.  The organization was founded and is spearheaded by Dr. Shiban Ganju, a gastroenterologist in Chicago. Dr. Ganju and I first became acquainted through my frequent comments on 3 Quarks Daily where he is a guest columnist. A few months ago he invited me to join Save A Mother as a volunteer. After a couple of  meetings with Dr. Ganju and his sister Veena Kaul who heads the Houston chapter of the charity, during which they educated me about the structure and the operational methods of the foundation, I agreed. I am impressed by the ambitious objectives of the program and the simple solutions it offers for a problem which affects a vast number of poor women in India. Here they are in a nutshell:

India Development Service (IDS) Save-A-Mother project aims to minimize suffering and death associated with pregnancy and child birth. We have been working in partnership with local NGOs in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Many other regions in India and rest of the world are in a similar situation where this program can be replicated.

Every day, over 160 women die in India from pregnancy and complications of child birth.

Save-A-Mother programs educate women about pregnancy, nutrition, immunization, delivery and care of the child. Save-A-Mother has a complementary benefit in saving the child also.

Our Objectives

1. Decrease maternal mortality by 50% in Sultanpur in 5 years. (Pilot Project)
2. Replicate this model to two more districts in 2 more years and institutionalise the program.
3. Replicate the program to vulnerable districts where mortality exceeds the national average.
4. Partner with NGOs in other high MMR countries

Most Common Causes of Maternal Mortality

1. Malnutrition and Anemia
2. Lack of immunization
3. Infection and Sepsis
4. Excessive bleeding
5. Difficult labor and other emergencies

Preventive Solutions

1. Iron, vitamin and nutritional supplements
2. Immunization
3. Antibiotics
4. Check up during pregnancy
5. Institutional delivery

Our Approach

Mobilization: We motivate villages to form a village council and combine adjoining villages into a cluster.
Training:  We train two health activists in each village, who educate the villagers.
Meeting: Weekly meeting at the village level and monthly meeting at the cluster level.
Awareness:  Education of mothers-to-be and their families, to help them to seek care
Access to Health Care:  Ensure check up three times at the local medical facility
Nutrition & Medicines:  Provide information about personal and public health.
Institutional delivery:  Ensure access and transportation to a local medical facility

We believe that one preventable death is one too many. We urge you to Save-A-Mother and together we can save a million mothers.

Please take a few minutes to check out the Save a Mother website and decide if you would like to help out. I urge readers to also spread the word around about this worthy effort.