Lessons from the Effective Promotion of Safe Motherhood in Zambia

This paper explores how safe motherhood is effectively promoted in Zambia. Top-down pressure to improve maternal health indicators appears to motivate the prioritised allocation of available resources. Otherwise, when supportive supervision and workers' intrinsic commitment waivers, capacity-building is seldom sufficient to ensure the implementation of skills learnt. Likewise, at national level, safe motherhood champions are rarely created through sensitisation. Empathy is more commonly due to personal experience in this sector. With a critical mass of such individuals now in the executive and strong macroeconomic performance, sector budget allocation has increased. Additionally, maternal health indicators are strongly emphasised, from national to district level, in light of looming failure to achieve Millennium Development Goal 5 and thereby successfully partake in the global development project. These narratives share a common thread, indicating the effectiveness of rewarding, or otherwise celebrating, the achievement of those results that are already prioritised by government institutions and personnel.