Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for inviting me here this afternoon to talk about the fact that women do deliver. They deliver babies, and they die in large numbers. They also deliver a lot of other things. They are major benefits to our social and economic fabric of life around the world.
I am Jill Wilkinson Sheffield and I am the president of Women Deliver. We're a global maternal health advocacy organization. We use all the data that Dr. Shaw has shared with you, and I'm so pleased to be speaking after Dr. Shaw, so I can save on the numbers.
It's a really important time for the women in the world, and frankly a momentous time for Canada. Women are the economic heart of the developing world, and they really need to know that their lives, their health, and their rights matter. Perhaps just as importantly, they need the funding committed to make that happen.
I want first to thank the Canadian government, which for decades has worked steadfastly toward improving the health of mothers and their newborns and children in developing countries. In my 30 years in the maternal health field--and in the reproductive health field, more largely--my fellow advocates and I have known Canada as a true ally and we have appreciated your strong leadership and your commitment. And we're counting on it now, as June approaches.
As you may know from the news, the most recent studies on maternal mortality demonstrate that we are making progress. This tells us that investments are paying off, and it tells us that there are solutions at hand that we can employ more broadly.
We have only five years left to achieve the millennium development goals. You know that MDG 5 is to improve maternal health. Its target is to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters in these remaining five years. Unfortunately, so far this is the goal that has made the least progress. It has also had the least investment. And if women are the heart of our families and our economies, it's time to change that.
Canada has an unparalleled opportunity to lead the promise of progress on this issue with its legacy initiative on maternal, newborn, and child health, to be introduced at the G-8 and G-20 summits in June. And yet as Canada seeks to shape its legacy, I urge you not to forget your past legacy. It's building on great success.
In 1994 in Cairo, Canada joined 178 other countries in a global consensus on the importance of addressing the health and rights of women in a comprehensive framework. That was the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development. And since that time Canada has not erred from its commitments. Now is not the time to do it either.
In 1974, even longer ago, Canada was at the table in Bucharest when it was agreed by the nations of the world that individuals and couples had the right to plan the number and spacing of their children, and that it was the responsibility of governments to ensure this happened.
Fortunately, to address maternal mortality and to achieve MDG 5, we really don't need the discovery of a miracle drug or an expensive medical breakthrough. We have low-cost solutions now. We know what works and we know it now. You've heard it already, just before my turn.
Women need access to family planning programs and modern contraceptives. And they need access to skilled care before, during, and after childbirth, especially access to emergency obstetric care. And we don't know when these emergencies will arise; that's one of the problems. Women also need access to safe abortion services when and where they are legal.
These solutions aren't rocket science, but they do save lives and they present enormous economic, social, and health benefits. Hundreds of thousands of women die each year in pregnancy or childbirth. We now know that the world loses $15 billion in lost productivity because of these deaths. I'm not sure anyone feels that this sum can afford to be lost--lost lives or lost productivity.
So while I wouldn't claim that maternal health is a simple issue to address, if we are to advance as a global community into a millennium of stability, prosperity, and dignity, it's a very necessary issue for us to address. Global consensus has been achieved before; we can do it again. In fact, we have to do it again for the sake of the women and the girls and our futures worldwide. We know what it costs to do this. It's an additional $12 billion a year, and that's not a lot in the scheme of things.
Over the past decade, since the global efforts, there have been setbacks and stagnation. We also know that we've made enormous progress. There are low-resource countries that have made dramatic changes in the situation of health for mothers and girls. Rwanda, Bangladesh, Honduras--the mark that all of these countries have in common is political will. They simply decided it had to be done and they are doing it, just as we know that not to decide is also to decide.
There are few times in your careers as parliamentarians that a problem and terrible injustice that has brought suffering to millions of women and their families can actually be solved. This is our moment to make this happen. We can do it. We absolutely have to do it. It's over to you and up to you, and civil society is ready to help in any way we can.
Thank you again for the invitation.