USAID

World AIDS day was first held in 1988 as the very first designated global health day. It’s now marked annually on December 1st to provide a worldwide opportunity to unite in the fight against HIV, support people living with HIV and commemorate those who’ve died. Currently, about 34 million people live with HIV. Almost 50% are women, 3.3 million are children and in developing countries where HIV/AIDS is rampant, most of them don’t know they’re infected. Often infected mothers will unknowingly transmit HIV/AIDs to their babies during childbirth or through breastfeeding but with proper treatment, an HIV positive mother's risk of passing the virus on to her child drops to 2%.

About a year after I became a mom, I got a call from my childhood best friend who now lives in Atlanta. She wanted to connect me with her Aunt who had a friend who worked at CARE, and asked if I would be interested in meeting with them to learn about the work they were doing to address extreme poverty. Of course I knew of CARE. I had always noted their presence in my travels to some of the more remote and impoverished corners of the world, and my mother had long been a supporter as well.

Happy International Women’s Day! It’s been quite a year since last IWD and quite a day today to cap it off. The day has been filled with UN resolutions, women of courage awards, and lots of reminders of the great work that's being done for women around the world—as well as reminders of how much more we have to do together. I wrote this piece last year for IWD and was reminded of it again this year. Hope you're all finding your own ways to celebrate and to be re-inspired for the days to come.

We got up early to beat the infamous Dhaka traffic and headed Northeast to Narshingdhi to visit a few CARE projects that focus on educating and involving the families of pregnant women as well as the community to prevent maternal deaths in this region. Since one of the delays in women accessing emergency care in time is her own family in too many cases, this program includes the entire household. A community health worker meets with the family to educate everyone about how to care for the pregnant mother, informing them about her nutrition needs, signs of complications, the need to save some money in the event of an emergency, and the importance of group participation in caring for the mother throughout her pregnancy. The family structure in Bangladesh is somewhat unique in that when a woman marries she leaves her parents' home to live with her in-laws. For example, in the family we visited, the pregnant woman, Mahmuda, was joined by her husband, her one year-old Khadija, her mother in law, sister in law, and the sister of her mother in law. If all of these family members are aware of the danger signs in labor, they can ensure that she gets to a health facility equipped to receive and care for her.