Following our recent health care action targeting Gordon Brown, Gilly Longton talks about being heavily pregnant and taking people’s messages to Downing Street.
Funny things happen to you when you’re pregnant. It’s a cliche but you do feel part of the sisterhood of women about to give birth. That’s why I was so pleased to be one of the twenty woman at Downing Street handing in the messages calling on Gordon Brown to deliver free health care in developing countries.
Ok, so here’s the gossip, we all waddled up to the front door and that unsmiling policeman who stands guard with a (primed) automatic weapon gave us a smirk. Then we go inside and after pictures, tea and cake it’s time to meet the PM.
Zoe Ball, our resident celeb and Oxfam health care ambassador, gives an impassioned speech about why rich countries should be pressurised into spending more money on the health care of childbearing women in developing countries.
Mr Brown nods a lot and herds us into the cabinet room! Once we are all seated he launches into a speech about how appalled he is about the number of woman who die needlessly in child birth in the developing world - he talks about Kenya where if a family can’t pay the medical expenses incurred during child birth then the mother and baby are kept as a ransom until funds are forth coming - I find myself blurting out that this used to happen in Ghana too (here’s me chipping in to the PM…I could get used to this Cabinet lark!).
Granted we only get five mins with the Prime Minster but he seemed to be on our side and committed to getting results in New York at the UN conference next week. Then it’s the proverbial pictures and posing patting our bumps outside “the door”.
So what did we achieve? It was cool to waltz around Downing Street and something to tell the kids…”guess where I was two weeks before you were born?”…but there were seeds of something that hold a lot more promise and as we left everyone was buzzing about how important this cause is.
We had a sense that the man leading this country is at least going to have a try and change the way things are and with organisations like Oxfam and Mumsnet committed to this cause and of course with the pregnant women of Britain on the case, it is hoped by the time my twin son and daughter are going to junior school there will be better news from countries like Malawi, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Tags: 'For All' health and education campaign, Downing Street, Gordon Brown
i am fed up of seeing squalid women and malnourished children on the tv screens. we should create a world where every child no matter which country they are born in and whereever in the world they are born in have access to basic healthcare, education, food, clothes, medicine, shelter, clean water and sanitation.
surely this is not much to ask? what is the point of humans even being capable of cloning or putting satellites into space if we cant even achieve this small thing?
October 6th, 2009 at 5:07 am