Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD, founder of Nashville-based Hope Through Healing Hands (HTHH), and Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, led a community conversation on improving maternal-fetal health in developing countries last month at Belmont University.
Moderated by Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton, “The Mother & Child Project: Simple Steps to Saving Lives in the Developing World” was the inaugural public event of the Faith-Based Coalition for Healthy Mothers and Children Worldwide, a joint partnership of HTHH and the Gates Foundation. More than 250 individuals representing the faith community, nongovernmental global health organizations and higher education attended the discussion.
“As I began to talk with women around the world, it became very clear to me the spacing and timing of pregnancies we take for granted in the U.S. is a matter of life and death for them,” said Gates. “So I got very involved in contraceptives, because it truly starts the cycle of life, where they can feed their children, get their children in school, and honestly, not die themselves.”
Frist agreed, saying, “Contraception is a pro-life cause.” He went on to explain, “If you delay first pregnancy to 18 years old, you can increase survival in countries where one in 39 women die in childbirth and cut the chance of children dying by 30 percent, enabling them to stay in school and become productive members of families.” He continued, “Second, if you can push out the interval between pregnancies to (a) three year period, the child is twice as likely to survive the newborn stage.”
During the event, Gates reflected on her upbringing in Dallas where she attended Catholic parochial school and confirmed she remains a practicing member of the Catholic Church. While Gates said she recognizes the tension between her work and the Church’s position on contraceptives, she has found common ground on healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, even though organizations embrace different tools to achieve it.
Frist noted the Faith-Based Coalition for Healthy Mothers and Children Worldwide has a critical role to play in engaging members of the faith community to help disseminate the message. He likened this new initiative to a similar movement of Americans in 2002 that shared a vision across all faiths, leading to the support and eventual funding of PEPFAR, the largest health initiative in history that turned the tide on HIV/AIDS.
“The millions of people dying of HIV/AIDS worldwide led to a major U.S. tax-payer led movement to save lives, resulting in more than what is now 12.9 million individuals currently on anti-retroviral medicine,” he said. Frist added such an impact on what is rapidly becoming another global pandemic is again possible. Currently 287,000 women in developing nations die from preventable complications during childbirth, and 6.6 million children die before their fifth birthday each year.
Several faith leaders already involved in this issue also participated in the program by echoing their support of this new initiative. “The best way to see change in Africa is to change the lives of African mothers,” said Steve Taylor, recording artist and filmmaker.
Mike Glenn, pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church, added, “The Evangelical church is often accused of loving the child and not the mother; but in doing so, we lose God’s mosaic. We believe in ‘Imago Dei,’ the dignity of every human being.”
“It all comes down to the mother and child nexus and the healthy timing and spacing of births,” Frist concluded.
For more information, go online to hopethroughhealinghands.org.
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