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Saving Women’s Lives Means Involving Men

(Credit: Karen Kasmauski/MCSP)

What is one of the keys to improving maternal and child health in some of the world’s most difficult places to give birth? Men.

(Credit: MNCH Services Project, Pakistan)

As USAID’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program, we have an ambitious aim: to prevent child and maternal deaths. And to achieve our goals, we know that we must be regionally and culturally specific in our approaches.

(Credit: Ronald Dangana/Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program)

This includes looping men into our efforts to disseminate health messages and get women into functional health facilities to deliver. In many countries where MCSP operates, men make all health care decisions for their families—determining family size, timing of pregnancies, and whether women and children have access to health care.

(Credit: Kate Holt/Maternal and Child Survival Program)

Involving men often helps us reach those women most in need of services and information. Engaging them is, therefore, critical to reaching our goals and ending the belief that maternal health is the sole responsibility of women.

(Credit: Karen Kasmauski/Maternal and Child Survival Program)

We are taking lessons forward from USAID’s predecessor Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program, and these efforts are bearing fruit. For instance, in Nigeria—where a husband’s permission is needed even for a woman to leave the house—trained male motivators helped local men make the best decisions for a healthy family.

(Credit: Kate Holt/Jhpiego)

In Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi, women enrolled in our programs were taught how to prevent HIV transmission to their child and were encouraged to bring their male partners to clinics for follow-up treatments.

(Credit: Jhpiego)

And in the conservative eastern region of Bangladesh, we worked with male groups to be actively engaged in their partner’s pregnancies. These men set aside funds for transportation to hospitals for safe delivery should complications arise during pregnancy—an outcome that likely would not have occurred without their involvement.

(Credit: Karen Kasmauski/Maternal and Child Survival Program)

Yet across the developing world, barriers continue to exist that prevent the full participation of men in supporting women's and children's health. Below, husbands in Nigeria wait outside a maternity center for their wives—a common site in countries where men aren’t allowed to be present during births.

(Credit: Indrani Kashyap/Jhpiego)

MCSP is working in 22 countries to give families and communities the information they need for optimal health and to overcome barriers to accessing services. Where women lack agency to make their own health decisions, this means working with men within families and communities to ensure that women and children are prioritized and thrive.

Saving Women’s Lives Means Involving Men

Posted June 16, 2015

2015 Father’s Day

This slideshow was originally published on USAID’s website.

This Father’s Day, we ask men everywhere to help the women in their lives make informed choices about seeking care. Their participation is critical to closing the stubborn achievement gaps that remain, and to realizing the world we want for our mothers and children.

Saving Women’s Lives Means Involving Men

Posted June 16, 2015

2015 Father’s Day

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2015 Father’s Day

About MCSP

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