The Parliament is closed for summer recess now and I’ll shortly be heading off for a much-desired holiday. In the meantime though, I wrote to the Euro Commissioner for Development this afternoon to query what is being done to prevent the catastrophic loss of maternal and child life in under-resourced countries. Of the 536,000 maternal deaths worldwide in 2005, 99% happened in poor countries where clinical services are thin on the ground. Given that the international community signed up to the Millennium Development Goals - number 5 of which focuses on improving maternal health - I really think we should be seeing much more EU ction on the ground to address this tragic problem.
