“For me, [multiple sclerosis (MS)] presented itself shortly after the birth of my second son. I had these symptoms; I had this profound fatigue that I didn’t have with my first child,” said Terrie Livingston at a recent Wilson Center event about the growing threat of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on maternal health. Livingston is the Head of Patient Outcomes and Solutions at EMD Serono, a business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

“Midwifery is a fix, it is not an add-on,” said Franka Cadée, President of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25. The World Health Organization designated 2020 the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife in recognition of the invaluable contributions of these two professions.  To meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, midwives and nurses must be valued and utilized as essential members of the health workforce.  Increased utilization of skilled midwives will also help countries achieve universal health coverage and improve access to sexual and reproductive health services, two key actions from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

We’ve got a crisis impacting our mothers and a crisis impacting our babies, said Dr. Lisa Waddell, Senior Vice President of Maternal Child Health and NICU Innovation and Impact Deputy Medical Director at the March of Dimes, at a recent Wilson Center event launching the Maternal Health Initiative’s CODE BLUE series, developed in partnership with EMD Serono, a business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. She was referring to non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which impact maternal health in the United States and globally. NCDs kill 18 million women of reproductive age each year, accounting for two in every three deaths among women.

“Non-communicable diseases have been the leading cause of death for women for at least the past 30 years but are often underreported and undertreated,” said Priya Kanayson, Policy and Advocacy Manager at NCD Alliance at a recent Wilson Center event on the impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on maternal health. The event marked the official launch of the Maternal Health Initiative’s CODE BLUE series, developed in partnership with EMD Serono, a business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Globally, in 2018, 73 percent of deaths among women were due to NCDs, amounting to 18 million women of reproductive age dying per year due to NCDs. The compounding effects of NCDs complicate women’s experiences in many unseen ways, and the rise and gravity of NCDs pose a growing and often overlooked challenge to maternal health worldwide.

The Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 was an opportunity for the global community to re-commit to the unfinished objectives of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development’s (ICPD) Programme of Action and accelerate the progress to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.