Invest in maternal health...save the world

You might have already read/seen this article from the NY Times Magazine from Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's forthcoming book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide", but I wanted to post it because towards the end of the long article, the authors posit a couple of development solutions that could dramatically help women, and consequently they argue, contribute poverty alleviation and development:

iodizing salt & eliminating obstetric fistula

The connection between iodized salt and maternal health is that a lack of iodine can lead to a micro-nutrient deficiency in mothers that can impair the cognitive development of their babies while they are still preganant. By having access to salt (SALT!!!!) that has been iodized, this problem could be basically eliminated.

Besides the obvious shout-out to the problem of obstetric fistula, I just think this article is worth mentioning because it shows that maternal health isn't just about keeping women from being dead mothers. I think that should be enough to shock the world into improving maternal health, but it isn't, or at least hasn't been. Healthier (and thus by default, alive) moms mean healthier babies, stronger kids, and incidentally, as the article argues, more prosperous families and stabler communities. Is that enough to make us care about dead mothers? I hope so.