Status of Women committee  One of the things that you may notice we talk about in the household... That is the area in which we talk about traditional birth attendants, and community health workers can have a great impact. An example that's very interesting is in India, where local women who were respected—who weren't health professionals, but were married ladies, as it were, and were respected within the community—were given training, went into the communities, and created women's groups, essentially, in which they shared information, taught each other, and acted as key facilitators.

Status of Women committee  I'm sorry?

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Right, but beyond just the services we provide, I'm talking about what we see on the ground and the fact that roughly 85% of the women who are dying are dying not because of or related to abortion. Those are all reasons why we felt it was important to focus on providing skilled attendants—

Status of Women committee  No, no, 85% are dying through lack of access to skilled birth attendants and because of sepsis, etc.

Status of Women committee  Fair enough. But that's why I sort of stayed silent, on balance.

Status of Women committee  I'm sorry, I've not heard that statistic, so I can't speak to it. The statistic that I've seen repeatedly is that it's roughly 15% of women. That's not something to sneeze at, not by any stretch of the imagination. I don't want to leave the impression that I think that's an acceptable number.

Status of Women committee  To be honest, I actually will choose to stay silent on that, in large part because there is a reason why we as a group, and Save the Children in particular, in our brief focused on community health workers. It's that we really felt that this was where the need is. It's not that we don't support the notion of a comprehensive approach.

Status of Women committee  Wrap it up? Okay. So that is the kind of work we do when we work with community health workers, and that's who we train.

Status of Women committee  C'est international.

Status of Women committee  As I said earlier, at Save the Children Canada we have some projects in Canada, but the majority of the work we do is overseas. We're in 120 countries.

Status of Women committee  I feel like I should essentially just say “ditto”. Of course we support a comprehensive approach. We have been a participant in the creation of the brief, which talks about what we feel is Canada's value added. I think the brief speaks for itself in that regard.

Status of Women committee  Save The Children obviously works predominantly with children. When we do work on maternal health issues, it is often through the work we do with children. For example, we do a great deal of work around breastfeeding and we do a great deal of work around prenatal support and vitamins and postnatal care.

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee members, for giving Save the Children the opportunity to present today. Save the Children works in Canada and 120 countries overseas to bring immediate and lasting improvements to children's lives. Save the Children focuses on the issues of health and nutrition, education, HIV/AIDS, child protection, emergency relief, and child rights.