WorldPulse: The Future Starts Here!

Adepeju

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• 2011 VOF Week 2

Sometime in year 2000, 189 countries of the world came together and amongst other goals set a target to reduce maternal mortality by 75% by the year 2015.

Today, eleven years after, Nigeria is clearly off target!

According to the Maternal Health Task Force, every year in Nigeria, an estimated 36,666 women die at childbirth. Behind this statistic are women whose hopes have been dashed forever, families whose structures have been destroyed and children who will never know motherly love and care. Sadly, a sizeable percentage, if not all, of these deaths are avoidable!

The question is; what are we doing wrong and what can we do right?

Peering at my computer and going through my Twitter timeline one hot afternoon in August, a tweet caught my attention. It was a call for applicants for the 2011 VOF training by Worldpulse. At first I ignored it, but curiosity got the better of me. I visited the webpage and found out it was hinged on the Interaction of people with common goals, exchange of ideas, sharing of experience, asking questions, getting answers and adopting working strategies to improve the lot of women the world over.

Having determined to look at the issue of maternal death from an uncommon perspective, an uncommon interactive media platform which favours learning as well as teaching, a productive opportunity to rub minds beyond my regular facebook and twitter was needed. Worldpulse was looking like what I had always wanted!

In advocating for women’s right and fighting against maternal mortality in Nigeria, questions such as how countries with low maternal deaths achieve and sustain it, how accountability of health officers are ensured in other countries, how my lone voice can be amplified to break the culture of silence that follows medical death due to medical negligence, how to encourage victim’s relatives to speak out, how to let them know that though speaking out will not bring back the dead, it can save a life etc have remained pertinent on my mind. With my discovery of Worldpulse, it brought the answers closer home.

Diversity of ideas is key to progress, a re-echo of my voice is key to reach. Worldpulse offers me both so passing by the VOF opportunity was not an option!

For me, the era of needless death, forgetting equipment in patients, cutting off fallopian tubes and arteries in the process of a simple C-Section as well as all other careless errors which increases maternal mortality must come to an end!

This opportunity rekindles my hope and assures me that although we have less than five years to go in achieving the MDGs and so much is undone, substantial progress can still be made.

Now I know there is an invincible force in the unity of our voices, stronger than the might of any army and louder than the rumbling thunder.

With Worldpulse, the future starts here!!!