Malawi chief Kwataine to share stage with Oprah Winfrey at US summit
By Thokozani Mbewe, Nyasa Times
March 25, 2013 0 Comments
Presidential Initiative on Safe Motherhood and Maternal Health chairperson Senior Chief Kwatainehas been invited by theNewsweek Daily Beast a popular media group in the United States of America to attend to Women in the World Conference at Lincoln Centre, New York City from April 4 to 5.
The summits theme is Women in theWorld Stories and Solutions will bring together several hundred global leaders to illuminate the challenges confrontingwomen and girls in the coming decade and to spur innovative concrete action in response to the challenges.
Some confirmed participants to the summit where the Ngoni chief will be a panelist are Oprah Winfrey, who will be talking about educating girls in Africa, Meryl Streep, Diane von Furstenberg, Yang Lan, and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson.
We are delighted to invite Chief Mac JulioKwataineMasina to participate as a panellist at this summit and appear on stage, reads the invitation letter dated February 22, 2013 seen by Nyasa Times.
Chiek Kwataine: Says an opportunity to learn about what other countries are doing on reducing maternal mortality
The conference willfocus on efforts to improve maternal health.
Kwatainesaid he is expected to speak on maternal health and felt greatly honoured to talk about his safe motherhood work in Malawi.
Senior Chief Kwataine has spent the past yearsince the launch of the Presidential Initiative on Safemotherhood and Maternal Health by President Joyce Banda on April 25th 2012 mobolising communities in Malawi, raising awareness and advocating on safe motherhood.
In the last six months he has trained over 1000 traditional leaders in different parts of Malawi on family planning, nutrition, hiv/aids and postnatal/antenatal care for mothers.
Perhaps one of his greatest achievements is that in Ntcheu District where he comes from now also popularly known as theheadquarters of safe motherhoodthere has been no maternal deathsince 2006.
Since President Dr. Joyce Banda through her initiativeaffected interventionssuch ascommunity mobolisation through chiefs, construction of waiting homes forpregnant women and training of community midwives there has been a significant drop in maternal deaths in Malawi.
President Banda has been championing the No woman should die giving birth campaign.
In 2015 Malawiis striving to meet its Millennium Development Goals which is to reduce the maternal mortality rate from where it is now at 675 out of 100,000 women dying during childbirth.