250 women embrace motherhood every minute and it should not be a fight
That’s why Safe Motherhood Week advocates for
“Accessibility to Quality Maternal Care and Safe Medication”
Help us understand women’s and health care professionals needs and preferences for information about the safety of medicines during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Healthy mothers and babies mean healthy societies
WE ALL HAVE A ROLE TO PLAY IN MAKING MOTHERHOOD SAFE
Maternal health risks are mostly abandoned as a non-priority topic, and is often streamlined into other topics and we aim to change that.
Safe Motherhood Week is a focal point for public engagement and action, aiming to actually generate evidence from real women and provide quality and objective information and resources to help women make better, more informed decisions, and to make the general public realise that there are still many improvements to be made.
Our Achievements
Safe Motherhood Week 2015
Landmark year – Safe Motherhood Week launched
2015 marks the inaugural year for Safe Motherhood Week, positioned as the community initiative in the context of maternal health in Europe with the support of our partners Mummy’s Star, Pregnancy Sickness Support, Pregnancy and Medicine Initiative, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),International Organization for Migration (IOM) and European Patients’ Forum (EPF). The launch of the dedicated website and social media channels to serve as online platforms shedding light upon maternal health champions and best case practices in Europe began the efforts to help create evidence and uncover the gaps in delivering care for mothers in Europe.
Safe Motherhood Week 2016
Our campaign message in 2016 was “Motherhood shapes our future. We all have the power to make it safe.”
A number of top-tier organisations and ambassadors joined our campaign in 2016, including Doctors of the World Greece, Microsoft Global Health, Women Deliver, Maternity Foundation and Women’s Association for Birth Rights in Hungary, while satellite events were organised in more than 10 countries to mark the week, through our partners in MSD for Mothers. Several new outstanding luminaries (maternal health champions) helped us amplify the campaign message , including Dr Nikitas Kanakis from Doctors of the World Greece, Ms Elena Bonfiglioli Director of Microsoft Health, Dr Katja Iversen, CEO Women Deliver, Dr. Petra de Sutter and Dr. France Donnay. The Safe Motherhood Week initiative also grew considerably in size and reach with access to new platforms like UBER and TEDxWomen. We also succeeded in consolidating our presence online, with a 1000% increase in web traffic compared to 2015.
Safe Motherhood Week 2017
The third edition of Safe Motherhood Week (October 2-8) brought together new partners and supporters of the programme and marked the launch of the global #MakeMotherhoodCount initiative.
In 2017, we furthermore succeeded in:
- Consolidating our online presence
- Launching the Safe Motherhood Week Instagram account
- Conducting a new series of interviews with high-level maternal care ambassadors and luminaries:
- Dr Flavia Bustreo (Assistant Director-General for Family, Women’s and Children’s Health (WHO): “Maternal mortality is a key indicator of a health system’s strength”
- Dr Julie Gerberding (infectious disease expert and the former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)): “People don’t know that mothers die giving birth in Ireland or other Western European countries”
- SocialGoodMoms (a network of +3000 mother bloggers who currently span twenty countries) “Europe is tackling its own maternal health issues. Here’s why. #MakeMotherhoodCount”
- Launching the “#OneThing” campaign around improving universal access to maternal health on International Women’s Day, receiving fantastic support from international platforms such as TEDxWomen and Microsoft Global Health.
Safe Motherhood Week 2018
2018 marked the fourth and significantly successful edition of Safe Motherhood Week. The week featured the launch of the Maternal Health Synapse at the World Convergences Forum in Paris (3-4 October) with the support of the Sanofi Espoir Foundation and the launch of a public consultation campaign to influence the legal framework in Europe to create a better environment for mothers. We brought the #MakeMotherhoodCount campaign to collect real stories about women, their families and their motherhood experience to Romania with over 30 personal stories from mothers focusing on “Commonalities in Motherhood”. This was complemented by over 90 blog posts contributed by influencers, advocates and mothers. The #SafeMotherhoodWeek campaign reached over 569,554 people with more than 5,000 engagements across all channels, with media reaching 9.3 million people in Europe and U.S.
Successful launch of the Maternal Health Synapse in Paris, at the World Convergences Forum (3-4 September) with 25+ organisations joining the platform
Digital campaign in Eastern
Europe with over 30 personal
stories from mothers focusing
on “Commonalities in
Motherhood” as an overarching
theme #MakeMotherhoodCount
Implemented a comprehensive editorial plan to support the advocacy and awareness efforts with over 90 blogs contributed by influencers, advocates and mothers
Launched a Public Consultation campaign to influence the legal framework in Europe to create a better environment for mothers
#SafeMotherhoodWeek campaign reached over 569.554 people with more than 5.000 engagements across all channels
Media outreach (press release distribution) to over 9.3 million people (Europe & US) and 269 interactions
Over 13.136 views of the Sanofi Foundation video across SMW channels