EngenderHealth Newsletter | August 2026: What Safer Motherhood Takes
Pregnancy and childbirth should be moments of possibility, not danger. Making them safer means ensuring mothers and newborns can count on respectful care, skilled providers, and lifesaving support when complications arise.
This month, we are looking at the people, practices, and systems helping make pregnancy and childbirth safer for more families.
What can help a baby born too soon survive?
Misgana’s daughter arrived nearly two months early, weighing just 2.4 pounds and small enough to fit in the palm of her mother’s hand.
For more than a month, Misgana held her baby skin-to-skin for hours each day as EngenderHealth-trained providers supported them with Kangaroo Mother Care.
“Why would a mother die when she’s bringing life?”
Dr. Moke Magoma’s residency in a remote region of Tanzania began with a night he would never forget. Woken at 2 a.m. to perform an emergency C-section, he was told to come through the hospital’s back door because lions were feeding on a zebra out front.
Now EngenderHealth’s Country Representative in Tanzania, he reflects on the moments that changed him, the patients he still remembers, and the experiences that shaped his life’s work in maternal and newborn health.
What does it take to make childbirth safer?
For more than 50 years, we have worked so that pregnancy is a choice and that people are supported with trained, respectful, high-quality care.
From preventing postpartum hemorrhage to improving surgical safety and emergency care, EngenderHealth helps providers and facilities respond when complications put mothers and newborns at risk.
Want to meet more mothers, families, providers, and communities helping make pregnancy and childbirth safer? Visit EngenderHealth’s impact stories library.
Thank you for being part of this work. Your voice, attention, and support help keep sexual and reproductive health and rights moving forward around the world.
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This email was originally shared over email on August 27, 2026.
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