“As many as 865 million of our mothers, daughters, [and] sisters across the globe are not reaching their full potential to contribute to their national economies,” said Dr. Belén Garijo, CEO for healthcare and executive board member of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, at a recent Wilson Center event. The act of caregiving, and the physical and mental health impacts that accompany it, often disproportionately rest on the shoulders of society’s women.

“We need to think differently about how we invest in our country programs, and what outcomes we are interested in,” said Dr. Koki Agarwal, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP) and a Vice President with Jhpeigo, at a recent Wilson Center event.

Every day, 7,100 babies are stillborn. A tragic, complicated problem,  stillbirth—which the WHO defines as a baby born with no signs of life at or after 28 weeks’ gestation—remains difficult to control and to assess. Some hospitals hide data on stillbirth, due to the shame and stigma associated with it. However, as White Ribbon Alliance CEO Betsy McCallon said at a recent Wilson Center event marking the 30^th anniversary of the Safe Motherhood Initiative, stillbirth “had been hidden and neglected, but that is changing.”

“Women still die…and they die preventable deaths,” said Address Malata, vice chancellor of the Malawi University of Science and Technology, at a recent Wilson Center event honoring the 30^th anniversary of the Safe Motherhood Initiative. Malata—a midwife and the former vice president of the International Confederation of Midwives—told the heart-wrenching story of a pregnant woman who, like so many others, died waiting for transportation.